Trump administration pulls support for annual Arctic environmental report
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- NOAA announced Tuesday it is withdrawing federal coordination of the 2026 Arctic Report Card, the peer-reviewed environmental assessment published annually since 2006, with communications director Kim Doster offering no explanation for the move.
- The 2025 report documented that the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, with surface temperatures from October 2024 through September 2025 the warmest on record since 1900 and March 2025 winter sea ice reaching the lowest annual maximum in 47 years of satellite data.
- Lead editor Rick Thoman said scientists are "scrambling to pull the pieces together," calling whether they can deliver a 2026 report "an open question" but expressing optimism about finding a path forward for 2027 and beyond.
- Editor Twila Moon of the National Snow and Ice Data Center said losing federal backing represents "a real stepping back of U.S. leadership in the science arena," emphasizing that the U.S. itself is an Arctic nation whose mid-latitudes face knock-on impacts.
- Former NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad, who led the agency under Biden, called the decision "really unconscionable" and warned that communities dependent on Trans-Alaska pipeline infrastructure, frost-heaving roads, and subsistence fishing will lose their baseline for tracking environmental change.
- Doster said all data NOAA has historically contributed to the report will continue being collected and remain publicly available, framing remaining Arctic research as supporting "national security, weather prediction, safety of navigation and the economic vitality of coastal communities."
- The pullback follows a broader pattern of climate-research cuts: the Trump administration has dismantled a Colorado climate research center, tried to scrap a $368-million deep-sea observation system, removed climate reports from government websites, stopped tracking the costs of climate-fueled disasters, and dismissed contributors to the U.S. climate-preparedness flagship report.
Why it matters: For two decades, the Arctic Report Card has served as the U.S. baseline on a region warming four times faster than the planet — used by Alaska municipalities, fishing communities, and the Trans-Alaska pipeline to plan for permafrost collapse and weather shifts. Without NOAA's coordinating role, former agency head Rick Spinrad warns, those stakeholders lose a one-stop planning reference and may have to reconstruct trend analyses from raw data themselves. The decision fits a pattern of rolling back federal climate science infrastructure that scientists say degrades the country's environmental intelligence.
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