Arctic Report Card 2025
Twenty years of tracking rapid Arctic warming and change
NOAA’s 20th annual Arctic Report Card (ARC) was released on December 16, 2025 at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in New Orleans. The report card is a collection of invited, timely and peer-reviewed essays providing clear, reliable, and concise information on the current state of different components of the Arctic environmental system. 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 Arctic Report Card is NOAA supported, but is not a report about NOAA activities. The report card has from the start been a collaboration across borders: this year, 112 scientists from 13 countries volunteered their time and expertise to contribute to the ARC. Increasingly, ARC is also a collaboration across cultures, with Arctic Indigenous Peoples and community members having a voice in the Report Card. Diverse perspectives are 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 2025 Highlights
For the quick summary of the 2025 ARC with lots of evocative imagery and graphics, NOAA produced a short video to accompany the report card (below). There are also many resources on the ARC website, including graphics and links to all the past editions of the Report Card.
Climate Highlights
Here’s a representative list of atmosphere and ocean highlights. I want to stress that nearly all these physical features are interconnected.
Surface air temperatures for the Arctic (lands and seas north of 60°N) from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest recorded since 1900 and the last ten years are the ten warmest on record in the Arctic. Since 2006, Arctic annual temperature has increased at more than twice the global rate. Arctic precipitation from October 2024 to September 2025 was also the highest on record.
In March, the 2025 annual maximum extent of Arctic winter sea ice was reached but it was the lowest annual maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record. September 2025 brought the 10th lowest minimum sea ice extent.
In August 2025, the marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean’s Atlantic sector saw average sea surface temperatures up to 13° F (~7° C) warmer than the 1991–2020 monthly average. The long-term warming of the Arctic Ocean is also influenced by ocean currents bringing oceanic heat northward from lower latitudes. Atlantification, a northward influx of warmer, saltier Atlantic water, has transformed large areas of the Eurasian Basin, weakening the stratification that has historically insulated sea ice from underlying warm water and illustrates how regional and global system changes are closely intertwined.
The Greenland Ice Sheet has lost ice mass every year since the late 1990s. In 2025, an estimated 129 billion tons of ice was lost 2025,
Alaskan glaciers have lost an average of 125 vertical feet (38 meters) of ice since the mid-20th century, dramatically lowering ice surfaces statewide. Ongoing glacier loss contributes to steadily rising global sea levels, threatening Arctic communities’ water supplies, driving destructive floods and increasing landslide and tsunami hazards that endanger people, infrastructure and coastline.
In both the North American and Eurasian Arctic, snowpack was higher than the 1991-2020 baseline. Despite this, by June snow cover extent dropped below normal, consistent with levels the past 15 years and June snow cover extent over the Arctic today is half of what it was six decades ago.
Environmental Highlights
In over 200 Arctic Alaska watersheds, iron and other elements released by thawing permafrost have turned pristine rivers and streams orange over the past decade. In these “rusting rivers”, the increased acidity and elevated levels of toxic metals degrade water quality, compromising aquatic habitat and eroding biodiversity.
First detected in the late 1990s, the “greening of the Arctic” has far-reaching impacts to Arctic habitats, permafrost conditions, and the livelihood of Arctic people, with implications for global climate and the carbon cycle. In 2025, maximum Arctic tundra greenness was the third highest in the 26-year satellite record, continuing a sequence of record or near-record high values since 2020.
Warming bottom waters, declining sea ice, and rising chlorophyll in the Chukchi and northern Bering Seas are driving shifts in mid-water and bottom-dwelling species, reshaping fisheries, affecting Arctic food security and Indigenous subsistence practices.
Indigenous Expertise
Continuing ARC’s commitment to feature local and Indigenous environmental monitoring work, this year Hannah-Marie Ladd led a team of authors on an essay that emphasize the power of Indigenous-led monitoring. On St. Paul Island, Alaska, the BRAIDED Food Security Project and the new Bering Sea Research Center delivered food safety information directly to the community in 2025, recording observations of harvested traditional foods with analysis of contaminants like mercury. These project builds on 20 years of work by the Indigenous Sentinels Network, which has supported Arctic communities by strengthening Indigenous-led observations of weather, wildlife, and environmental change.
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. This year’s lead editor was Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller, who works at the National Snow & Ice Data Center and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder. The ARC is supported by the Arctic Research Program in NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program.
As always, all opinions herein are mine alone and not those of NOAA or UAF.
This adds confirmation to the fears which most of us Arctic watchers have. The warming is unprecedented for historic times and proceeding at a rapid pace. My idea a couple years ago of buying resort property on Baffin Island doesn't seem so far-fetched now.