Trump administration ends NOAA support for annual Arctic Report Card

The annual report, issued since 2006, prominently features work of Alaska scientists and conditions in Alaska, including those affecting Indigenous communities

Arctic sea is seen in 2018 by Demarcation Bay off the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastline. The Arctic Report Card, which has been issued annually by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 2006, describes the rapidly changing features of the Arctic, including sea ice, glaciers, permafrost and boreal forests. (Danielle Brigida/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

By Yereth Rosen

Alaska Beacon

The Trump administration has pulled federal support from the Arctic Report Card, an annual, peer-reviewed report that has been published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 2006.

NOAA will no longer provide administrative support for the report, though NOAA scientists and programs will continue to collect climate data, said a statement released by the agency on Tuesday.

“Coordination of the 2026 Arctic Report Card will not be facilitated through NOAA,” the statement said. “All data historically contributed by NOAA to the product will continue to be collected and will remain publicly available.”

“The Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Arctic Research Program will continue to support observations, models and products that contribute to national security, weather prediction, safety of navigation, and the economic vitality of coastal communities,” the statement continued, naming one of NOAA’s programs.

The report card is typically released in mid-December and has been a regular NOAA service since the administration of former President George W. Bush.

It synthesizes peer-reviewed studies about Arctic conditions such as sea ice extent and thickness, air temperature, vegetation changes, glacial melt, marine productivity and the status of Arctic wildlife species. In recent years, the report has included special chapters on Indigenous knowledge and concerns.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks is a major contributor to the report. Rick Thoman, a scientist with UAF’s Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness, is one of the three main editors. 

In last year’s Arctic Report Card, about two-thirds of the chapters had lead or contributing authors from Alaska, usually from UAF but also from other Alaska-based institutions like the University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Alaska Southeast, the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island and the Alaska-based offices of the National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey.

The NOAA decision leaves Arctic scientists and scientific institutions with a challenge of trying to put out their own annual report without NOAA’s support, said Melody Brown Burkins, a polar scientist and director of Dartmouth College’s Institute of Arctic Studies.

“The people coming together and talking about the state of the Arctic, it’s too valuable to lose. So I think we are immediately moving to ‘How do we continue this.’ I don’t think we know yet,” said Burkins, who grew up in Fairbanks.

The Arctic Report Card has been a critical tool used to inform decisions and policies about the fastest-warming part of the world, she said. The NOAA support that put all the Arctic knowledge in one place in a publicly accessible way has “been pulled out from under our feet,” she said.

“But that doesn’t mean the planet stops changing and the Arctic has stopped changing and the science has stopped happening or the humans have stopped trying to live up there and have thriving lives,” she said.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said NOAA’s withdrawal from the project is bad for Alaskans.

“For 20 years, the Arctic Report Card has helped Alaskans track the profound changes taking place across our state. Through this work, we have learned more about the tundra shifting from a carbon sink to a carbon source, thawing permafrost, changing sea ice, and coastal erosion, all of which have helped shape policies to support our fisheries and communities across the region,” Murkowski said in a statement.

“My understanding is that the 2026 report is already underway and may still continue under another sponsor. But this reflects a troubling federal trend that I am working to push back against: the undercutting of scientific research at a pivotal time for the Arctic. We need to invest more in the region, not less,” she said.

Also criticizing the change was Wáahlaal Gíidaak, vice president of Arctic and northern waters for the environmental group Ocean Conservancy.

“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. Its rapid warming has profound consequences for Arctic communities, ocean health and our global climate,” Gíidaak, who is from Southeast Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island, said in a statement. “We are already seeing the devastating impacts of extreme heat around the world, and those changes are even more pronounced in our ocean, which acts as a global heat sink. We cannot afford to look away from what is happening in the Arctic, or stop measuring it. We should continue to fund critical NOAA programs, such as the report card, which are essential to protecting our ocean and keeping Americans safe.”

Trump administration policies

The withdrawal of NOAA from the Arctic Report Card fits with a pattern of Trump administration policies limiting action to study and respond to climate change. Those policies have affected NOAA in particular.

Early on in President Trump’s second term, the administration took down NOAA’s climate change website, climate.gov.

Mass firings across government agencies hit NOAA functions, including those highly important to Alaska: weather forecasting and fisheries science.

The administration also ended the NOAA data deliveries to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, forcing the Colorado-based center to reduce services that track sea ice, snow and glacier conditions in Alaska and elsewhere.

There were earlier signs that the Trump administration was targeting the Arctic Report Card, so the news about this year’s report was not entirely unexpected, Burkins said.

“We’re in some respects not surprised but incredibly sad,” she said.

Last year, even though NOAA issued the Arctic Report Card on schedule, it declined to issue a press release announcing the event. And authors, at a news conference held at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, fielded questions about the possibility that the 2025 report would be the last one issued by NOAA.

President Donald Trump has referred to climate change as a “hoax,” and a key member of his administration has expressed particular animus toward NOAA because of its climate science.

Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump administration that the Heritage Foundation published prior to the 2024 election, recommended breaking up the agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The report blasted the climate-related science performed by NOAA’s six divisions, including the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Weather Service.

“Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Commerce says.

Russel Vought, the lead author of Project 2025, now directs the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House.

Courts have blocked some of the Trump administration's efforts to end climate science work, at least temporarily. For example, after the administration announced its intention to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a Colorado center that began operating in 1960 and has worked in partnership with NOAA, a federal judge in May issued an injunction that prevented such action, for now.

• Yereth Rosen came to Alaska in 1987 to work for the Anchorage Times. She has been reporting on Alaska news ever since, covering stories ranging from oil spills to sled-dog races. She has reported for Reuters, for the Alaska Dispatch News, for Arctic Today and for other organizations. Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.