Arctic Report Card 2023
Frequent extremes are transforming the Arctic, yet resiliency and opportunity lie within diverse partnerships.
NOAA’s 18th annual Arctic Report Card (ARC) was released on December 12th at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco. The report card is a collection of invited, timely and peer-reviewed essays providing clear, reliable, and concise environmental information on the current state of different components of the Arctic system relative to historical records. The ARC is intended for a wide audience interested in the Arctic environment and science, including scientists, teachers, students, decision-makers, policymakers, and the general public.
The ARC has evolved during the past 18 years, and while NOAA supported, the report card is an international collaboration across borders and increasingly a collaboration across cultures, with Arctic Indigenous Peoples and community members gaining a voice in the Report Card. This diverse perspective is essential to understand the scale and complexity of the physical and ecological changes observed across the Arctic as well as their implications for societies within the Arctic and beyond.
ARC 2023 Highlights
For the quick summary of the 2023 ARC with lots of evocative imagery and graphics, NOAA produced a short video to accompany the report card. There are also lots of resources on the ARC website, including links to individual essays and a pdf of the full report card. Check it out.
The Arctic Report Card is perhaps best known for the annual update of physical variables, and I’ll get to that. But I want to start off by spotlighting two essay of special importance to Alaska.
Indigenous Voices in the Arctic
Roberta Glenn-Borde, an Iñupiat women from Utqiaġvik working for the University of Alaska Fairbanks, was lead author on the essay “Nunaaqqit Savaqatigivlugich: Working With Communities to Observe the Arctic”, which reports on the work of the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub (AAOKH) through centering the observations and experiences of peoples of northern and northwest Alaska. The essay starts:
“What is a key environmental change in your community that you want people to know about?” “The sea ice and permafrost are melting too fast.” – Joe Mello Leavitt [Iñupiat], Utqiaġvik (AAOKH 2023).
Roberta’s closing remarks at the AGU Arctic Report Card press conference said it all:
“Despite these rapid changes, AAOKH communities are still able to go out hunting, are still able to catch animals, and they’re still able to live a lifestyle rich with cultural traditions. Yes, there are challenges, but we shouldn’t be labeling Indigenous people in the Arctic as victims of climate change. We don’t subscribe to the idea that we are victims of our environment. There’s strength in sharing our voices. Sharing our histories, our knowledge, our concerns, and our ideas for how to move forward. And there’s strength in being proud that we have survived as a people to make it this far, to be able to continually thrive in our region, living off the land and sea, and we don’t plan on stopping soon. And you know, there’s strength in listening. We’re strong people with strong knowledge systems, and strong ideas about how to move forward, and when we come together, all of us, we’re able to accomplish great things. That’s the message I would like to leave with everyone here today.”
Salmon in Western Alaska
Erik Schoen, also with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, led an author team on the essay “Divergent Responses of Western Alaska Salmon to a Changing Climate”. I found this essay particularly enlightening because I did not understand why or how salmon returns have collapsed on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers while at the same time Bristol Bay salmon are at all time highs. Both these extremes are of paramount importance to Alaskans lives, livelihoods and cultures. The essay makes clear that while there is still a lot we don’t know, different species of salmon are being impacted in different ways in part because of different life histories. Figure 1 of the essay (below) condenses some of the highlights into a useful infographic.
Environmental Highlights
Here’s a incomplete list of environmental highlights. I want to stress that nearly all these physical features are interconnected.
Average surface air temperatures for the Arctic in the past year (October 2022-September 2023) were the sixth warmest since 1900 and Summer (July-September) surface air temperatures were the warmest on record.
Summer high-pressure systems brought warm temperatures, widespread melting, and exceptional rainfall volumes across the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the Summit Research Station on June 26th reported only the fifth day in the past 34 years with above freezing temperature.
Pan-Arctic precipitation for the past year was the sixth highest on record but with important regional and seasonal variations.
Snow accumulation during the 2022-23 winter was above average across both North America and Eurasia but then rapid spring melt resulted in record low North American snow cover extent in May 2023 and near record low June snow cover extent in Eurasia.
The combination of early snow melt and a hot and dry summer set the stage for a record wildfire season in the Northwest Territories, Canada. More than two-thirds of NWT residents were evacuated from their communities at some point during the summer and there was widespread prolonged poor air quality from dense smoke.
The 2023 minimum sea ice extent was 6th lowest in the satellite record (since 1979). Sea ice extent continues to decline, with the last 17 September extents (2007-23) as the lowest on record; i.e., the September extent has been lower every year since 2007 than ANY September 1979-2006.
August average sea surface temperatures are warming in almost all Arctic seas that are ice-free in August. Average sea surface temperature between 65°N and 80°N is increasing at a rate of ~0.9°F (~0.5°C) per decade.
All Arctic seas, except for the Chukchi Sea, Beaufort Sea, and Canadian Archipelago, show increased ocean phytoplankton blooms (ocean primary productivity) with the largest percent change in the Eurasian Arctic and Barents Sea. On land, the 2023 circumpolar average peak tundra greenness, which is the overall vegetation, including plants, shrubs, and trees taking over grassland and tundra, as measured by satellite, was the third highest in the 24-year record, as was especially high in parts of northwest Canada and northern Alaska.
The Arctic Report Card also features essays other aspects of the Arctic environmental system, so that over time many different topics are covered. This year, ARC included an essay on subsea permafrost, something that I had never really though about. It turns out that since the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, rising sea levels have inundated terrestrial permafrost surrounding the Arctic Ocean, resulting in nearly 1 million square miles (~2.5 million square km) of subsea permafrost that is at risk of thawing. International research collaboration is needed to address critical questions regarding the extent and current state of subsea permafrost and to estimate the potential release of greenhouse gasses (carbon dioxide and methane) as it thaws.
Arctic Report Card History
The Arctic Report Card started out as a timely update of the Arctic environmental system following the Arctic Monitoring & Assessment Programme’s massive Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, published in 2005 and incorporating observations to about 2003, though in some cases older. The scope of the ARC expanded rapidly: in 2011 there were 23 separate sections. The 2019 ARC saw an important addition of Indigenous perspectives with the “Voices from the Front Lines of a Changing Bering Sea” and this is now an important part of ARC. In 2020, Jackie Richter-Menge, who worked on every report card between 2006 and 2020, authored a fascinating retrospective on that history, both from the trends of the physical variables of the Arctic and changes in the report card itself.
From microplastics to black carbon, food security to marine debris, the ARC has covered a lot of ground over the past 18 years. The broadening scope and incorporation of expertise from beyond the western science perspective is critical for the continued relevance of Arctic Report Card, and I hope that process continues into the future.
Full Disclosure
I’ve been a co-author on the surface air temperatures essay in the Arctic Report Card since 2015 and have served as one of three general editors since 2020. For the 2023 report card I served as the lead editor. I first wish to express my profound gratitude to the editorial team: Matthew Drunkenmiller and Twila Moon, both with the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center and coordinating editor Sarah Tucker, and to the voluntary work of the 82 contributors from 11 countries to this year’s ARC. I also want to thank the Arctic Research Program in NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program for supporting the report card and the NOAA teams working to produce the outstanding graphics, the video and the web pages.
As always, all opinions herein are mine alone and not those of NOAA or UAF.
Nice work, Rick! Quyaana!