EARTHWATCH 24-7 · HOW WE CHECK OUR FACTS

Last updated October 28, 2026. This page covers the website at earthwatch247.com, the EarthWatch 24-7 live stream and the EarthWatch 24-7 YouTube channel.

In short: everything we show comes from official scientific agencies, every number the narrator says is taken from what is on the screen at that moment, and our software checks the two against each other. When we get something wrong, we fix it and fix the cause.

Where the data comes from

• Official agencies only. Earthquakes come from the USGS and national seismic networks (among them GFZ GEOFON, the Japan Meteorological Agency, GeoNet, INGV and Geoscience Australia). Storms come from NOAA's National Hurricane Center and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Warnings come from national weather services. Volcanoes, fires and floods come from NASA, the USGS, GDACS and the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, and space weather from NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center and NASA. The full list, with each licence, is on our sources & credits page.
• Every event names its source. Each event card says who reported it, for example "Earthquake · USGS", and when.
• You can see how fresh it is. Live data arrives at different speeds, so the map key shows how old the satellite clouds, rain, lightning and fire layers are, and the site tells you when it is catching up or offline.
• Forecasts are the forecasters'. When we say where a storm is heading, we are repeating the official forecast and we say whose it is. We do not make our own predictions, and nobody can predict earthquakes; we report them after they happen, along with the aftershock forecasts the USGS publishes.

How the narration is checked

• The words come from the screen. The narrator's reports are written by our software from the same data the screen shows. If a number changes while a report is waiting its turn (a quake is upgraded, a new one arrives), the report is rewritten before it plays.
• Spoken numbers are checked against the screen. Our software records each spoken line next to what the screen showed at that moment. An automated check then compares counts, magnitudes, wind speeds, distances, sizes and dates. In our latest check, on October 27, 2026, all 116 stories compared agreed.
• Rounded means "about". When a number is rounded for speaking, the narrator says "about". When two events are tied, she says so instead of picking one.
• Units follow the place. On the live stream, places in the United States are described in miles, feet and °F, and everywhere else in kilometers, meters and °C. Cards show both. On the website, you choose your units.
• The voice is computer-generated. The narrator is a synthesized voice (Kokoro, an open speech model), not a person reading live. Its reports are written by our software from the agencies' data.

Earth Explained episodes

• Fact-checked line by line. Before an episode is published, every statement in its script is checked against published scientific sources, and corrected or cut if it cannot be supported.
• Real imagery, properly licensed. Maps and satellite pictures in episodes come from public-domain or licensed sources such as NASA Landsat, and each one's date is shown on screen.

When we get it wrong

Feeds can be revised after we show them (a magnitude is updated, a storm is reanalyzed), and software can make mistakes. If you see something that doesn't match an official source, tell us through our YouTube channel, youtube.com/@EarthWatch247. We check it against the source, correct it, and fix the cause so it doesn't happen again.

← Back to the live globe · Sources & credits · Privacy · Terms of Service