A few weeks ago I provided a link to a “Clouds of the Earth” Google Earth file which recently stopped working. This is a good time to introduce a new, and much improved GE file for showing all the clouds around the Earth. Chris Parsons wrote a script to process a global satellite map which turns the non-cloud portions transparent. The data updates once every three hours. Download the new [updated] Global Clouds 
. This is the closest I’ve seen GE appear to real satellite photos of the Earth. Chris tells what tools he is using in his post at the Google Earth Community. Amazing work Chris!
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
That is really cool! I have a lot of friends in the Meteorology Dept. of my university that are going to love this!
This is indeed a nice improvement on the earlier version that didn’t have any transparency.
Now, if only GE would support some form of animation so we could see the clouds moving.
Animating image overlays will be a tricky upgrade. But, I suspect we will see it eventually.
Well if i had a say in planning the next features, i’d do the following:
– add a scripting environment to GE, so we can manipulate the kml objects using some visual basic language.
– add a timescrollbar which controls kml properties: visibility and locations based on some time coding.
Well, dynamic overlays already exist.
I saw (on this site or another) a dynamic vector overlay showing flight and planes trace (speed and elevation) and refreshing every 10 second.
Why couldn’t we expect the same things for raster overlays ?
JM
Cloud cover does not work anymore! Why?
Yes, the server was taken off line. The author and I are trying to find a new home for the script and image file (it averages about 5Gbytes of traffic a month).
Good News: the Global Cloud Map is working again thanks to some help from Google!
why in the programm Google earth so small zoom ??? i would be like better quality for look the some places