Glacier Watch Screensaver
The Glacier Watch screensaver runs a live counter of ice lost from the world's benchmark glaciers, extrapolated from real published annual mass-balance figures — the same anchor-and-extrapolate approach as this site's Population Clock. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Glacier Watch screensaver works
The saver starts from a real, published annual mass-balance figure for the chosen reference glacier or global glacier average.
It extrapolates that real rate into a smoothly ticking loss counter for the time you've been watching.
A small trend chart shows the real multi-year mass-balance history behind the number.
Figures are updated periodically as new annual survey data is published, not fetched live.
A worked example
Set it to Global reference glaciers and watch the counter tick upward in tonnes of ice lost — extrapolated from the real published annual average, the same honest-estimate approach as the Population Clock.
Settings & tips
- Reference glacier switches between global average and named benchmark glaciers.
- Accent recolours the counter and chart.
- Like the Population Clock, this is a real anchor rate extrapolated smoothly, not a live sensor feed.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this a live sensor reading?
- No glacier reports mass balance in real time — this extrapolates a real published annual rate, exactly like the site's Population Clock does for population.
- Where do the figures come from?
- Published benchmark-glacier mass-balance surveys (the same reference glaciers used in climate science).
- How often are the anchor numbers updated?
- Periodically, as new annual survey results are published.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.