Last season in the Arctic was the hottest in the last 125 years. Sea ice extent during its usual maximum in March was the lowest in 47 years of satellite observations. The North American tundra was greener and richer in vegetation than ever before.
The observations, presented Tuesday in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's annual Arctic report, show how quickly and deeply the region is changing as the planet warms.
“The Arctic continues to warm faster than the global average, with the 10 years including the last decade being the 10 warmest years on record,” said Steve Tur, NOAA's acting chief scientist and associate administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research.
As a result of this warming, “melting permafrost is changing ecosystems, turning more than 200 Arctic Alaska watersheds orange as iron and other elements flow into rivers,” Thare said. Researchers have noticed higher acidity and greater concentrations of toxic metals in these rusting streams.
This is one of many impacts of climate change in the region highlighted in the report. This is the 20th year NOAA has released its Arctic report card, but the first of President Donald Trump's second term.
The Trump administration has taken steps to deny or downplay other reports about climate change, including National Climate Assessment And billion-dollar climate disaster database. Trump also called climate change a “scam.” and his administration is working to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency ability to regulate greenhouse gas pollution it causes it.
At a news conference Tuesday, Matthew Druckenmiller, one of the report's authors and a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said the team “did not experience any political interference with our results.”
Outside scientists interviewed by NBC News said the report struck largely the same tone and alarm as in past years, with some minor exceptions.
“I honestly didn't notice much of a change in tone from previous Arctic reporting in years past, which was good to see,” said Tom Di Liberto, climate scientist and media director for Climate Central. “The implications of their findings are the same as previous Arctic report cards. The Arctic is the canary in the coal mine.”
Di Liberto previously worked in NOAA's communications department but was fired in March when the agency laid off employees who were new to their positions. He noted that last year's report its headline called for a reduction in fossil fuel production, while the new one did not mention fossil fuels at all. Otherwise, he did not notice any major changes.
NOAA presented a report outlining how climate change is destroying ecosystems and threatening livelihoods in the Arctic region at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans. The event, one of the largest scientific conferences of the year, attracts thousands of scientists.
Mark Alessi, a climate scientist and fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the report card “does a great job of conveying the facts about what is literally happening on the ground in the Arctic.”
“Anyone reading this can see that he is still shouting the red alert,” he added.
The report's authors highlight—in somewhat dry language—how proposed budget cuts to a network of scientific programs taking measurements in the Arctic, such as satellite programs that measure sea ice, could jeopardize the data collection on which the report is based and the decisions made based on it.
“Risks to funding and staffing, as well as aging infrastructure, could exacerbate AON's existing challenges. [Arctic Observing Network] gaps that compromise analysis of long-term trends and undermine decision-making,” the report says.
In particular, it highlights several satellites that are part of Defense weather satellite program and is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2026. Their loss will limit sea ice measurements, according to the report. It also notes that the tundra greenness dataset will not be updated due to NASA funding cuts and that other climate datasets may be affected by federal budget cuts proposed for fiscal year 2026.
The Arctic is warming two to four times faster than other parts of the Earth due to a dynamic called Arctic amplification that changes both ocean currents and the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth's surface near the pole.
“It's a feedback loop where you lose sea ice, you lose land ice, you start absorbing more sunlight and you start warming up much faster,” Alessi said.
Temperature records are organized by Arctic water year, so the most recent record was from October 2024 to September.
