Trump administration ends support for flagship Arctic climate reports
By Andrew Freedman, CNN
(CNN) — The Trump administration is ending federal support for the flagship annual report on the state of the Arctic and how the region is changing due to climate pollution, according to two people familiar with the situation.
The Arctic Report Card has been supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for two decades, including in 2025 under the Trump administration. Notably, last year’s report lacked a news release on its findings — a decision that left it up to institutions outside the government to communicate them.
A spokesperson for NOAA confirmed the change in the agency’s involvement in this year’s report.
“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,” agency spokesperson Kim Doster told CNN.
According to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, NOAA informed some of the report’s scientists on Monday afternoon and gave no reason for the immediate suspension of all agency support. News of the decision was first reported by Politico.
One of NOAA’s employees had been working as the coordinating editor for the report card, and the agency typically has provided considerable logistical support for hosting the report online and holding a press rollout with the lead authors. The Arctic Report Card has traditionally been published as a NOAA technical report, but that will not happen this year.
A peer-reviewed report, the Arctic Report Card has provided climate scientists, policymakers and the public with the latest findings on the state of the Arctic environment upon its publication each December. The upcoming, 21st edition of the Report Card is already in process, and the sources said it is now up to the lead authors, together with chapter authors and other subject matter experts involved with it, to try to figure out how to still carry it forward.
The report takes an Arctic-wide view of the rapidly changing environment in the region, which is warming at about three times the rate of the rest of the globe. But while it contains an abundance of climate science findings, such as on the state of Arctic sea ice, it is not exclusively a climate change report — rather it has been known as a compendium of timely knowledge on the Arctic, from its plants and animals to the changing way of life for the people who live there.
Besides its use in educational settings and by other researchers, the report also helps inform national security policy and has been cited by NATO in the past, one source said.
The withdrawal of support for the Arctic report continues the Trump administration’s pattern of canceling climate programs, distorting the science and restricting the public’s access to it.
For example, NOAA no longer produces an annual report on billion-dollar disasters or updates that database. It also dismissed all the authors working on the Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment to start anew with its own set of authors who have questioned or rejected some of the widely accepted scientific findings on human-caused climate change.
The administration also halted updates to climate.gov, providing no new official information there on everything from El Niño to global warming.
The-CNN-Wire
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