Environment — News & Analysis

Trump administration pulls support for annual Arctic environmental report (August 12, 2026)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has pulled its support for an annual report on environmental changes across the Arctic, a region already heating up four times faster than the global average due to the climate crisis. On Tuesday, August 11, 2026, Kim Doster, communications director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the 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, Doster told the New York Times that coordination of the 2026 Arctic Report Card would not be facilitated through NOAA, and that all data historically contributed by the agency to the product would continue to be collected and remain publicly available. Doster said other NOAA programs would continue to support research in the region contributing to "national security, weather prediction, safety of navigation and the economic vitality of coastal communities." Over the last 20 years, the peer-reviewed report has tracked changes across the Arctic's atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and tundra; the 2025 edition found that surface temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest recorded since 1900, and that in March 2025 Arctic winter sea ice reached the lowest annual maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record. On land, it 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 over the last 10 years. The "rusting rivers" have increased acidity, while elevated levels of toxic metals have degraded water quality, affecting aquatic habitats, rural drinking water supplies and subsistence fishing.

Rick Thoman, lead editor for this year's report, said the team is "scrambling to pull the pieces together," adding that he is optimistic about finding a path forward for 2027 and beyond but that whether the 2026 edition can be assembled given the late date is an open question. Twila Moon, an editor of the report and a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, said the United States is an Arctic nation and that many changes there reach down into the mid-latitudes; even if the report moves forward by other means, she said, its no longer being a U.S. federal effort represents "a real stepping back of US leadership in the science arena, in the environmental intelligence arena." Rick Spinrad, the former NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, called the decision "really unconscionable," noting that the report provides the baseline for what is happening in the Arctic and is relied on by those dependent on Alaskan infrastructure, including the oil pipeline, fishing communities, and municipalities such as Anchorage and Fairbanks concerned about weather conditions affecting frost heaves on their roads. The cancellation is the administration's latest move to impede government-led studies of the climate crisis: since retaking office in January 2025 it has stripped support for scientific research mentioning "climate," dismantled a key climate research center in Colorado, attempted to scrap a $368 million deep-sea observation system, removed climate change reports from government websites, stopped tracking the costs of climate-fueled disasters, and dismissed all contributors to the government's flagship report on climate preparedness.