Thread: Trump administration pulls support for annual Arctic environmental report

Trump administration pulls support for annual Arctic environmental report

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...nmental-report

Move by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is latest government rollback of climate science activity

Maya Yang

Wed 12 Aug 2026 14.17 EDT

The Trump administration has pulled its support for an annual report on the environmental changes across the Arctic, a region that is already heating upfour times faster than the global average due to the climate crisis.

On Tuesday, Kim Doster, the communications director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), said the federal agency was withdrawing its support for the Arctic Report Card, which has provided environmental updates on the region to scientists and the public since 2006.

Without explaining why the government stopped its support, Doster 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.”

Doster told the outlet that other Noaa programs would continue to support research in the region that contributes to “national security, weather prediction, safety of navigation and the economic vitality of coastal communities”.


Dismay as Trump officials to dismantle key ocean monitoring system

The Guardian has approached Noaa for additional comment.

Over the last 20 years, the peer-reviewed report has tracked crucial changes across the Arctic’s atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and tundra. The climate crisis has made the Arctic the world’s fastest-warming region. In recent years, the region has experienced severe sea ice decline, carbon sink reversals and ecosystem upheavals.

In the 2025 Arctic Report Card, scientists found that surface temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest recorded since 1900. It also found that in March 2025, Arctic winter sea ice reached the lowest annual maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record.

Meanwhile, on land, the report noted that ongoing glacier loss contributes to steadily rising global sea levels, threatening Arctic communities’ water supplies, driving destructive floods, and increasing landslide and tsunami hazards.

It also found that in more than 200 Arctic Alaska watersheds – large land areas where rain and melted snow drain northward into the Arctic Ocean – iron and other elements released by thawing permafrost have turned rivers and streams orange in the last 10 years. The “rusting rivers” have in turn increased acidity while elevated levels of toxic metals have degraded water quality, in turn affecting aquatic habits, rural drinking water supplies and subsistence fishing.

Rick Thoman, the lead editor for this year’s report, said: “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.”

Meanwhile, Twila Moon, one of the report’s editors and a scientist at the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Center, said: “The US 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 further south.”

Moon 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 US federal effort. That’s a real stepping back of US 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, the former Noaa administrator under Joe Biden, called the decision “really unconscionable”.

“It provides the baseline of what’s happening in the Arctic,” Spinrad said, referring to the report. “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 added, highlighting municipalities like 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.

The funding cancellation is the Trump administration’s latest move to impede government-led studies on the climate crisis and its global effects.

Since retaking office last January, the Trump administration has stripped away support for scientific research that mentions “climate”, dismantled a key climate research center in Colorado in a move that the governor, Jared Polis, warned would put “public safety at risk”, attempted to scrap a $368m crucial deep-sea observation system, as well as removing key climate change reports from government websites.

Other federally led environmental rollbacks include Noaa’s decision to stop tracking the costs of climate crisis-fueled disasters, as well as the dismissal of all contributors to the US government’s flagship report on climate crisis preparedness.

If you don't report on it, does that mean it has gone away?