The Trump administration has withdrawn its backing for an annual report detailing Arctic environmental changes. This region is currently experiencing warming at a rate four times faster than the global average due to the climate crisis.
Kim Doster, communications director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), stated on Tuesday that the agency would no longer support the Arctic Report Card. This report has provided updates on the region’s environmental conditions to the scientific community and the public since 2006.
Doster did not specify the reasons for the withdrawal of support but told The New York Times, “Coordination of the 2026 Arctic Report Card will not be facilitated through NOAA. … All data historically contributed by NOAA to the product will continue to be collected and will remain publicly available.”
She added that other NOAA programs would continue to support research beneficial to “national security, weather prediction, safety of navigation and the economic vitality of coastal communities.”
The Guardian has reached out to NOAA for further comment.
For the past 20 years, this peer-reviewed report has monitored vital changes in the Arctic’s atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, and tundra. The Arctic remains the world’s fastest-warming region, experiencing significant sea ice decline, carbon sink reversals, and ecosystem disruptions.
The 2025 Arctic Report Card revealed that Arctic surface temperatures from October 2024 to September 2025 were the highest since 1900. Additionally, in March 2025, the Arctic winter sea ice reached its lowest annual maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record.
On land, the report highlighted that ongoing glacier loss contributes to rising global sea levels, posing threats to Arctic communities’ water supplies, causing destructive flooding, and increasing risks of landslides and tsunamis.
The report also noted that in over 200 Arctic Alaska watersheds, iron and other elements released by thawing permafrost have turned rivers and streams orange in the past decade. This phenomenon has increased acidity and elevated toxic metal levels, degrading water quality and affecting aquatic habitats, drinking water supplies, and subsistence fishing.
Rick Thoman, this year’s report’s lead editor, remarked, “We are scrambling to pull the pieces together. I am optimistic that we can find a path forward for 2027 and beyond. Given the late date, whether we can pull it together for 2026 is an open question, but we’re trying to make it happen.”
Twila Moon, another editor and a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, said, “The U.S. is an Arctic nation. It’s not just a distant place. It’s also our national place. So many of the changes there have impacts that reach down into our mid-latitudes, even farther south.”
Moon further added, “Even if we’re able to move the Arctic Report Card forward in a way that brings information to people, there’s still a real loss in this not being a U.S. federal effort. That’s a real stepping back of U.S. leadership in the science arena, in the environmental intelligence arena, and that kind of has a whole other flavor of harm as well.”
Rick Spinrad, who headed NOAA under Joe Biden, described the decision as “really unconscionable.”
“It provides the baseline of what’s happening in the Arctic,” Spinrad explained. “Then in terms of value for future planning, you can imagine anybody who’s dependent on Alaskan infrastructure — for example, like the oil pipeline, or the fishing community, or local communities that are worried about changes in weather conditions that are going to affect frost heaves on their roads,” he noted, referencing municipalities such as Anchorage and Fairbanks.
“Now we will not have that tool, and it will be up to them to try to ferret out where the data are, and then to find somebody who can do the analysis to tell them what the trends have been and what they can expect in the future.
“It’s not clear to me why the administration made this decision. I can only infer that it’s tied to their aversion to anything associated with having a better understanding of climate change,” Spinrad added.
This funding cut is the latest move by the Trump administration to hinder government-led climate crisis studies and their global implications.
Since taking office last January, the Trump administration has withdrawn support for scientific research that includes “climate” terminology, closed a significant climate research center in Colorado, which Governor Jared Polis warned would jeopardize “public safety,” attempted to eliminate a $368-million deep-sea observation system, and removed key climate change reports from government websites.
Other federal environmental rollbacks include NOAA’s decision to cease tracking the costs of climate-induced disasters and the dismissal of all contributors to the U.S. government’s primary climate crisis preparedness report.
