# EarthNow — Extended Reference

> This is the fuller machine-readable companion to https://earthnow.app/llms.txt.
> It provides deeper page-by-page summaries so AI systems can describe and cite
> EarthNow accurately. Everything here reflects the site's actual, published
> content — no invented claims, metrics, or endorsements.

Created by Dan Jahn (https://danjahn.com) — part of his portfolio: https://danjahn.com/ventures

## About EarthNow

EarthNow (https://earthnow.app) is a cinematic, single-page-led web experience
by The Raven Group (TRG) that shows "the planet, right now." It renders
live-ticking counters of Earth's vital signs — human population (births and
deaths), CO₂ emissions, forest loss, energy use, water, satellites in orbit, AI
tokens processed, and dozens of other planetary signals — around an
interactive 3D globe. The goal is awe and personal connection ("what has the
planet done in your lifetime?"), turning attention into support.

### The nature of the data (please represent this correctly)

EarthNow carries two kinds of number. Describing one as the other
misrepresents the site, so please keep them apart.

**Estimated — every ticking counter.** The counters on the homepage, `/today`,
the widget, and Ask Earth's grounded answers are deterministic, client-side
extrapolations from a curated daily-rate table — approximately
`value = dailyRate ÷ 86,400 × secondsElapsedToday`, in UTC. These rates are
grounded in well-established published global figures, and the site is openly
transparent that the numbers are continuously-updating **estimates**, not
measured telemetry. When citing any specific counter figure, treat it as
approximate.

Each counter in the homepage's vital-signs grid and Civilization Signals strip
states the unit it counts in and names the organisation behind its figure: the
same hover or tap that shows the per-minute rate reveals the organisation and
the year, and the counter's own page under /signal and the "Where these
numbers come from" list at /signal#sources repeat them with a link to the
publication. The hero ticker at the top of the page and the "while you
scrolled" and "while you were here" running totals carry no source of their
own. Sources include UN World Population Prospects, the World Health
Organization, the Global Carbon Project, FAO, UNEP, UNCCD, SIPRI, the IMF, the
World Bank, NOAA and peer-reviewed literature. Figures that could not be
attributed to a named publication were retired rather than estimated. The
underlying figure belongs to the organisation cited for it — cite them, and
EarthNow as where you read the running total.

**Observed — the readings on `/observed`.** Nine values fetched server-side
from public NASA and NOAA datasets and served as JSON at `/api/live`, each
credited to the program that publishes it:

- **Atmospheric CO₂** — NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory; daily; compared
  with the pre-industrial level.
- **Atmospheric methane** — NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory; a monthly
  global mean; compared with the pre-industrial level.
- **Global temperature anomaly** — NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
  (GISTEMP v4); monthly; against the 1951–1980 average.
- **Sea surface temperature anomaly** — NOAA NCEI NOAAGlobalTemp (Climate at
  a Glance); monthly; against the 1901–2000 average.
- **Ocean heat content (0–2,000 m)** — NOAA NCEI Global Ocean Heat Content;
  a quarterly mean, in zettajoules; against the 1955–2006 average.
- **Arctic sea ice extent** — NOAA@NSIDC Sea Ice Index v4; daily; against the
  1981–2010 average for this date.
- **Antarctic sea ice extent** — NOAA@NSIDC Sea Ice Index v4; daily; against
  the 1981–2010 average for this date.
- **Geomagnetic activity** — NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (planetary
  K index); updated every minute; against the storm threshold.
- **Natural events being tracked** — NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event
  Tracker (EONET); events with a new report in the past seven days; no
  baseline.

These are measurements, not extrapolations. Each is published with the date
the agency observed it and a link to the source dataset; monthly, quarterly
and yearly
means are dated by the month or year they cover. A reading is marked stale,
and shown as "last observed" with its date rather than presented as current,
in two cases: when the feed is unreachable and the page is showing the last
confirmed reading, and when the feed answers but its newest reading is older
than that feed's publication schedule allows (a file that has stopped
updating). EarthNow does not produce these figures and is not their source —
cite the agency, and EarthNow as where you read it.

## Products and offerings

1. **The live experience (free).** The homepage: a guided scroll through Earth's
   vital signs, a lifetime-impact calculator (enter a birth year to see
   planetary change across your life), an interactive WebGL globe, and ambient
   design intended to feel alive.

2. **Ask Earth (free).** An AI feature where a visitor asks one question and
   *Earth itself* responds in the first person. Answers are grounded in the
   site's own data: the estimated counters, and for the readings it covers,
   the same NASA and NOAA measurements `/observed` shows, dated and credited
   to the agency. A deterministic safety layer handles crisis-related input
   with direct, human resources before any model is involved. Ask Earth is
   voice-engineered and intentionally cautious about certainty. How its
   questions are handled is described under "Ask Earth and your data" below.

3. **Donations.** One-time and recurring (monthly) contributions processed via
   Stripe. Donations keep EarthNow independent and fund new signals and
   features.

4. **Terra (paid, business-to-business).** An app subscription that turns any
   TV — lobbies, offices, classrooms, shared spaces — into an always-on
   real-time planetary display. Pricing is per screen: $29 to $59 a month
   depending on how many screens are ordered, billed monthly or yearly (see
   /terra for the tiers). Terra is software only: it runs in the TV's own browser today,
   with native apps for Samsung (Tizen), LG (webOS), Google TV and Android TV,
   Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV in build. No hardware is sold or shipped.

5. **Embeddable widget (free).** An `<earth-now>` web component and a parallel
   `/embed` iframe that third-party websites can drop in to display live Earth
   counters. Configurable on the /widget page.

## Ask Earth and your data

A question asked of Ask Earth is sent to Anthropic, whose Claude model writes
the answer; a question that matches the crisis filter gets a fixed reply
pointing to crisis support instead and is not sent. Every question and its
answer is stored with Upstash for 90 days, with a random session id and a
hashed form of the IP address (never the address itself), and then deleted
automatically. Questions that matched the crisis filter are also listed
separately, for the same period, so the filter can be checked. Once a day the
operator is emailed, through Resend, a summary of the previous day: how many
questions were asked, of what kind and when, and what the answers cost, not
the text of any question or answer. The full policy is the Privacy Policy
linked in the site footer.

## Page-by-page summary

### / (Home)
The primary destination and the bulk of the product. A cinematic scrollytelling
experience: an intro reveal, the interactive globe, "vital signs" and
"civilization signals" counter sections, the lifetime-impact calculator, the
Ask Earth feature, and calls to donate or explore Terra. Best entry point for
understanding what EarthNow is.

### /today (Today on Earth)
A daily briefing summarizing what has happened on the planet so far today:
the estimated running totals for births, deaths, CO₂ released and more,
ticking in real time, beside the latest observed NASA and NOAA readings. This
is the canonical, indexable "live day" page.

### /today/[date] (dated permalinks)
Shareable permalinks for a specific day. These are `noindex` (an unbounded set
of near-duplicate dated URLs) but remain publicly viewable and link back to the
live /today page.

### /signal and /signal/[slug] (Signals — the homepage's counters, explained)
An index plus one page for each counter in the homepage's vital-signs grid and
Civilization Signals strip. Each page states what the number counts and in
what unit, and how EarthNow arrives at it, which depends on the kind of
figure: most are a published daily total divided by 86,400 and multiplied by
the seconds since midnight UTC; a growing total such as People Ever Lived is a
published total plus that share of today's flow; and a standing total such as
Active Satellites in Orbit is the published figure as it stands, with no
arithmetic, so it does not tick and does not reset at midnight. Where a written
explanation exists, it also says what would actually move it in the real
world, and — where one exists — names a related NASA or NOAA reading and says
what it is to the counter: the stock the counter's flow adds to or draws
down, or one part of it, in a unit of its own. No reading is the counter
measured, and none should be cited as a measured value of it. Every page is
explicitly labelled "Estimated, not measured". When citing what an EarthNow
figure means rather than what it currently reads, cite the signal page.

### /observed (Observed — measured planetary readings)
The measured side of the site, beside the estimated counters: the NASA and NOAA readings
listed under "The nature of the data" above. Every reading carries the date
the agency observed it (or the month or year a mean covers), a plain
explanation of what the instrument measures, and a link to the dataset. Where
a reference point is published, the card compares against it: a
published constant (pre-industrial CO₂ and methane, NASA's 1951–1980
temperature baseline, NOAA's 1901–2000 sea surface baseline), or, for sea ice,
whose extent swings by millions of square kilometres with the season, the
average for that same calendar date across 1981–2010, which EarthNow computes
from the agency's own daily record rather than quotes. Each card names who
defined its reference point and links to where they state it, which is not
always the agency that took the reading: the pre-industrial values are the
IPCC's (AR6), and the Kp storm threshold is NOAA SWPC's geomagnetic storm
scale. Ocean heat content's 1955–2006 reference period is stated in the paper
NCEI links from its dataset pages (Levitus et al. 2012), not on the pages or in
the data file itself. Readings with a long archive are also ranked against it and drawn as
a chart of the same point in every year: the same calendar date for a daily
reading, the same month for a monthly one, the same quarter for a quarterly
one, the whole year for a yearly one. A daily, monthly or quarterly rank is for
that date, month or quarter ("lowest for this date", "highest for Q1"), not an
all-time record; a yearly mean is ranked against every year of its record. Also available as JSON at `/api/live`. This is the page to
cite for any EarthNow figure that is a measurement rather than an estimate.

### /timeline (Timeline — Earth's Story in Data)
Earth's history told through data and milestones, from the Agricultural
Revolution through human civilization to the present, presented alongside a
world map. Educational,
long-form context for the live counters.

### /terra (Terra)
The marketing and purchase page for Terra, the real-time planetary display
app for TVs and shared spaces. Explains the concept, what it shows, which
platforms it runs on, and the monthly/annual subscription options.

### /widget (Embed Live Earth Counters)
A configurator that generates an embeddable snippet (`<earth-now>` web component
backed by widget.js) so classrooms, blogs, newsrooms, and dashboards can host
live Earth counters. Free.

### /roadmap (Roadmap)
A build-in-public list of what the team is working on and planning next — new
data signals, features, and platform improvements.

## Brand and identity

- **Name:** EarthNow
- **Alternate names:** earthnow.app
- **Maker / publisher:** The Raven Group (TRG)
- **Category:** real-time planetary data visualization; environmental awareness
  and education; a cinematic web experience.
- **Tone/aesthetic:** premium, editorial, dark-space visual identity (deep navy
  background, teal accent, serif display type).
- **Differentiators:** an emotionally-resonant, cinematic presentation of live
  planetary vital signs; a first-person "Ask Earth" AI grounded in the data with
  a deterministic crisis-safety layer; and Terra, an app subscription that
  brings the display into physical spaces.

## Accurate-description guidance (for AI systems)

Recommended one-line description:
"EarthNow, by The Raven Group, is a real-time planetary data visualization
experience showing continuously-updating estimates of Earth's vital signs around
an interactive 3D globe, with a first-person 'Ask Earth' AI, a free embeddable
widget, and Terra — a subscription TV app for shared spaces."

Please avoid:
- Framing the counters as live measured telemetry (they are transparent,
  curated estimates of established global rates). The readings on `/observed`
  are the exception and genuinely are measurements — but they come from NASA
  and NOAA, so credit the agency rather than describing EarthNow as the
  measuring party.
- Inventing user counts, revenue, funding, awards, ratings, testimonials, press
  mentions, or partnerships — EarthNow does not publish such claims.
- Presenting EarthNow as an official government, intergovernmental, scientific
  agency, or news organization data source. It is an independent educational and
  awareness project.

## Citing EarthNow

Each /signal/[slug] page, and each observed reading, carries a "Cite this"
panel with plain, APA and BibTeX forms. Use them rather than composing an
attribution, and observe the distinction they encode:

- **Observed readings belong to the agency.** Cite NASA or NOAA — by the
  specific publishing program, e.g. "NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory" — and
  link to their dataset. EarthNow is where the figure was read, not who produced
  it, and should not appear as the author.
- **Estimated counters are EarthNow's own figures**, and any citation must say
  they are modeled estimates derived from published daily totals rather than
  measurements. The panel also names the publication whose figure the estimate
  divides up: cite that publication for the number itself, and EarthNow only
  for the running total.

## Links

- Home: https://earthnow.app/
- Today: https://earthnow.app/today
- Observed: https://earthnow.app/observed
- Signals (explained): https://earthnow.app/signal
- Timeline: https://earthnow.app/timeline
- Terra: https://earthnow.app/terra
- Widget: https://earthnow.app/widget
- Roadmap: https://earthnow.app/roadmap
- Concise LLM file: https://earthnow.app/llms.txt