Tools for Climate Reporting

Published April 2026 · Last updated April 2026

Satellites, sensors, and public datasets have made environmental wrongdoing harder to hide. Journalists now have free access to real-time deforestation alerts, fishing vessel tracking, and emissions data that once required a research institution to obtain. These tools turn that data into stories.

Satellite monitoring

Global Forest Watch

Global Forest Watch tracks deforestation worldwide using satellite imagery updated weekly. It shows where tree cover is disappearing, how fast, and in what patterns. The platform covers every forest on Earth and provides data going back to 2001.

Journalists use Global Forest Watch to verify corporate claims about sustainable supply chains. A palm oil company says it doesn't source from deforested land. Global Forest Watch shows whether the concessions it operates in have lost tree cover. The platform includes fire alerts, showing active blazes in near-real-time.

Key features:

  • GLAD alerts — weekly deforestation alerts at 30-meter resolution for the tropics
  • Fire alerts — active fire detections updated daily from NASA's VIIRS satellite
  • Country dashboards — deforestation stats by country, state, or concession boundary
  • Custom area monitoring — draw any boundary and get deforestation alerts for that area

Global Fishing Watch

Global Fishing Watch tracks fishing vessel activity using satellite AIS data, radar, and machine learning. It shows where fishing vessels operate, for how long, and whether they enter marine protected areas. The platform monitors over 65,000 commercial fishing vessels.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing costs $23 billion per year globally. Global Fishing Watch has helped journalists track vessels that turn off their transponders near protected areas, identify forced labor on fishing vessels by tracking ships that stay at sea for months, and document unauthorized fishing in sovereign waters.

The vessel search tool shows a ship's complete track history. Enter a vessel name or MMSI number and see everywhere it has been.

Google Earth Pro

Google Earth Pro provides free access to high-resolution satellite imagery with historical time-lapse going back decades. Compare images from different years to document changes: expanding mines, shrinking lakes, growing urban sprawl, or disappearing glaciers.

Google Earth Pro's historical imagery is particularly useful for stories about long-term environmental change. Show a river in 2005 versus 2025. Show a forest before and after logging. The visual evidence is immediate and compelling for readers.

Mapping and spatial analysis

QGIS

QGIS is a free geographic information system that handles the spatial analysis satellite monitoring tools can't do on their own. It overlays datasets: pollution sources on top of population maps, pipeline routes through indigenous territories, flood zones against income data.

QGIS handles shapefiles, GeoJSON, raster data, and connects to web mapping services. For climate journalism, typical QGIS workflows include:

  • Overlaying EPA emissions data on census tract demographics to identify environmental justice issues
  • Mapping wildfire perimeters against housing development to quantify risk
  • Calculating how many people live within a certain distance of a polluting facility
  • Combining sea-level-rise projections with property value data

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map of the world maintained by volunteers. Its data is open and downloadable. For climate reporting, OpenStreetMap provides infrastructure data (roads, buildings, pipelines) that can be combined with environmental datasets in QGIS.

In regions where commercial maps have limited coverage — rural areas, developing countries, recently disaster-affected zones — OpenStreetMap often has the best available data, thanks to Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team mapping efforts.

Visualizing environmental data

Datawrapper

Datawrapper turns environmental data into publishable charts and maps. Its choropleth maps show emissions by country. Its locator maps pinpoint pollution sources. Its line charts show temperature trends over time. All charts are responsive and accessible.

For climate reporting, Datawrapper is particularly useful for:

  • Time series — temperature records, sea level measurements, CO2 concentrations over decades
  • Locator maps — pinpoint facilities, spills, or monitoring stations on a map
  • Choropleth maps — show emissions, deforestation rates, or air quality by region
  • Bar charts — compare countries, companies, or facilities by emissions or violations

Investigative angles these tools enable

Illegal logging

Global Forest Watch shows deforestation inside protected areas or indigenous territories. Cross-reference with corporate concession maps and supply chain disclosures. Google Earth Pro's historical imagery documents the progression.

Illegal fishing

Global Fishing Watch tracks vessels that enter marine protected areas or fish without authorization. AIS gaps (when vessels turn off transponders) often correlate with illegal activity. Cross-reference vessel ownership through corporate registries.

Emissions fraud

Compare self-reported emissions data from corporate sustainability reports against satellite-measured methane plumes and EPA facility-level data. QGIS can overlay reported versus observed emissions geographically. Discrepancies are the story.

Environmental justice

Use QGIS to overlay pollution sources (EPA Toxics Release Inventory) with Census demographic data. Quantify how many low-income residents or communities of color live near polluting facilities. Census Reporter provides the demographic context. Datawrapper maps and charts publish the findings.

Start here if you're new to climate reporting tools

Beginner recommendation

Start with Global Forest Watch and Google Earth Pro. Both are visual, require no technical setup, and produce immediate results. Search for a location you're reporting on and explore the data layers.

Add Datawrapper when you need to publish charts or maps. Move to QGIS when you need to combine multiple datasets spatially. QGIS has a learning curve, but it's where the strongest investigative findings come from.

Recommended learning path

  1. Global Forest Watch — explore the map, set up a custom alert. Takes 30 minutes.
  2. Google Earth Pro — use historical imagery to compare a location over time. Takes an hour.
  3. Global Fishing Watch — search for a vessel and view its track. Takes 20 minutes.
  4. Datawrapper — make a chart from climate data. Takes an hour.
  5. QGIS — take an introductory tutorial on loading and overlaying datasets. Takes a weekend.