Understand time: live, recent past, ahead, history and scenarios

What the time bar does, what "LIVE" means, and what the product does not replay.

What you get: You know which moment the map is showing and which layers follow the time bar.

Steps

The time bar at the bottom runs from 6 hours ago to 72 hours ahead. The "LIVE" badge is lit only at now; it goes dark the moment you scrub.
Drag the handle or use the keyboard: Space plays and pauses the loop, the arrow keys step 5 minutes (1 hour with Shift), and L snaps back to live.
The past six hours replay radar and geostationary satellite frames where the source keeps them.
Ahead of now, the bar drives estimates, not forecast imagery: vessel positions projected from their last course and speed, the horizon for hazard intersections, and the cursor on forecast charts.
For the long past, the "History timeline" layer (in the History section) shows dated earthquakes, tsunamis, eruptions and battles; switching it on suspends the live layers until you switch it off.
Map → "Day/night shade" draws the sunlit and dark halves, swept by the time bar.
View → "Since your last visit" dims what was on the map when you left and lights what arrived since: new earthquakes, GDACS alerts, aviation accidents, volcano notices and wildfire incidents, for the layers you have on. It turns itself on after an absence of half an hour or more.

The time readout and the "LIVE" badge agree with what you meant to look at.

Aircraft and vessels do not replay in the past: there is no position archive to replay.
Forecast rasters are not yet on the bar; a scrubbed-ahead map is not a weather forecast.
A link stores the time offset, not a moment: a link made at "3 hours ago" yesterday opens at 3 hours before whenever it is opened.
A scenario storm is something you draw; its corridor and counts follow your assumptions, not a model run.

Last checked against the product on 23 September 2026. Live contents change; this describes how the product works.