openEarthModelling website

Source of https://openearthmodelling.github.io, the website and blog of the openEarthModelling group: an open research group building computational software for the Earth system.

Stack

• Astro 5 static site, Tailwind CSS 4
• Three.js 0.170 (WebGL2) for the hero globe
• Deployed to GitHub Pages via GitHub Actions on every push to main

Develop

npm install
npm run dev        # http://localhost:4321
npm run build      # static output in dist/

Take a screenshot of any page (uses the local chromium, software WebGL):

node scripts/screenshot.mjs [url] [outfile]

Write a blog post

Add a Markdown file to src/content/blog/ with this frontmatter:

---
title: Your title
description: One-line summary for the list page.
pubDate: 2026-09-13
author: Fan Zhang
tags: [research, devlog]
---

Your text. Images go in `public/images/`, referenced as `/images/...`.

Commit and push to main. The site rebuilds automatically.

Publish from Feishu

Posts and publications can also be written in Feishu and synced into the repository (requires Node >= 23.6 to run the TypeScript sync script natively):

node scripts/sync.mts new "Article title"  # scaffold: copy the doc template + add a draft row
node scripts/sync.mts blog                 # publish rows in "pending" state
node scripts/sync.mts publications         # regenerate src/data/publications.json
node scripts/sync.mts all --dry-run        # preview without writing anything
node scripts/sync.mts all --no-push        # write and commit locally, but do not push

The Feishu document is the source of truth for the article: its title, and the author/summary metadata block at the top of the body. Editing a published document never redeploys automatically: the sync flips the row to "updated" after a lightweight revision probe, and the change only ships after you set the row back to "pending".

The content pipeline (registry tables, status machine, permissions) is documented in docs/design/content-pipeline.md. It requires lark-cli logged in to the group's Feishu account on the machine running the sync.

The Research Projects and People sections follow the same content-collection pattern as they gain real content.

Hero design

The landing globe (realistic Earth, day-night terminator, dual cloud shells, and ocean / land / atmosphere hexagonal grid layers) is specified in docs/design/hero.md. Tunable parameters live at the top of src/scripts/globe.ts.

Asset attribution

• Earth imagery: NASA Blue Marble and night-lights datasets (NASA)
• Cloud map: derived from the three.js examples texture set (MIT)
• Rendering: three.js, MIT license