Watching The Planet Screensaver
The Watching The Planet screensaver streams the datasets curated by Resource Watch — the satellite and sensor feeds used to monitor fires, drought, forest loss, coral bleaching and air quality. It runs in the browser with nothing to install; press ESC to exit.
How the Watching The Planet screensaver works
The saver reads The Resource Watch API, run by the World Resources Institute.
No account and no key: the request goes straight from your browser, or from this site's own refreshed copy of the feed where the source does not permit browser access.
Values are drawn on a canvas that resizes with the window, so it works on a laptop or a wall display.
If the source is unreachable the saver says so on screen rather than showing stale numbers as though they were current.
A worked example
Each row names a dataset and its data provider, with near-real-time feeds flagged. The catalogue is effectively a list of what institutions have decided is worth watching continuously, which is a different question from what gets measured once. Entries carrying “nrt” in their identifier are the ones updating today rather than annually.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display without changing the data.
- Add it to a Multi-view grid to watch it alongside other live savers.
- Press ESC at any time to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Resource Watch?
- A platform run by the World Resources Institute that curates environmental datasets from many providers into one catalogue, so they can be compared and mapped together.
- What does near real time mean here?
- That the feed updates within hours to days of observation, typically from satellites. It is distinct from the annual or decadal datasets that make up much of environmental monitoring.
- Is this real data?
- Yes. It comes from The Resource Watch API, run by the World Resources Institute. Nothing is invented or simulated, and if the source cannot be reached the saver reports that instead of drawing something plausible.
- Does it cost anything or need an account?
- No. Every screensaver here is free, runs in the browser and needs no sign-up. This one uses a public API that requires no key.