The Arctic is warming, getting wetter, and showing signs of rust, according to NOAA’s 20th Arctic Report Card.
Human activity is driving the Arctic to warm at a pace far faster than the rest of the world, triggering profound environmental impacts that will keep intensifying unless there’s strong, sustained action. Those are among the key conclusions of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest assessment of Arctic environmental health, released this week.
With contributions from 112 scientists across 13 countries, the 2025 Arctic Report Card builds on decades of long-running observations. The report’s executive summary describes it as both a record of rapid change and a warning about the future: transformations over the next twenty years will reshape Arctic ecosystems, affect the well-being of people who live there, and influence the global climate system that everyone relies on.
The report is organized into 14 chapters, covering familiar topics like surface air temperature, sea ice, and precipitation, while also delving into newer concerns such as “rusting rivers.” This phenomenon—thousands of waterways in Alaska turning orange—has emerged over the last decade as permafrost thaw exposes and releases minerals into rivers and streams.
Many of the record-highs and low points highlighted in the report remain recurring themes.
From October 2024 through September 2025, Arctic surface temperatures were the warmest on record since 1900. Every year in the past decade ranks among the warmest documented periods, with Arctic warming outpacing global averages by a significant margin.
Moisture in the atmosphere is increasing as the region gets wetter. Last year, Arctic precipitation reached new heights, though some areas and seasons diverged from the overall pattern.
As one of the report’s researchers, Rick Thoman of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, notes, year-to-year fluctuations do not disappear in a warming world. Yet despite outliers, the main trend lines point in the same direction for years and decades.
“It’s another link in the chain showing how rapidly conditions are changing,” Thoman remarked.
Maximums and minimums
March 2025 recorded the lowest maximum Arctic sea-ice extent in the 47-year satellite record. The oldest, thickest sea ice—ice older than four years—has virtually vanished.
The report states that the oldest, thickest Arctic sea ice has declined by more than 95% since the 1980s, with multi-year ice now largely confined to waters north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
Arctic sea ice has fallen about 28% in 2025 compared with 2005, a change with wide-ranging consequences for marine life, weather patterns, and Arctic navigation.
These shifts heavily influence conditions in Alaska’s Bering and Chukchi seas, where both commercial and subsistence species have declined or disappeared.
Acean of change is evident: southern species move northward while Arctic species decline dramatically—roughly two-thirds in the northern Bering Sea and about half in the Chukchi. This isn’t a minor adjustment; it’s a complete reorganization of the ecosystem, according to Hannah-Marie Ladd of the Aleut Community of St. Paul’s Indigenous Sentinels Network.
Such ecological upheaval directly affects local communities and economies, Ladd emphasized. We’re not merely observing warming—we’re witnessing a marine ecosystem, tied to cultural and economic life, transform within a single generation.
Rusting rivers
One chapter focuses entirely on “rusting rivers.” Alaska’s Arctic now includes more than 200 waterways affected by this phenomenon.
Thawing permafrost releases iron and other elements into groundwater, which travels to streams and rivers, turning many watercourses orange over the past decade. The condition has raised acidity and elevated toxic metals, jeopardizing fish and potentially human health.
In Kobuk Valley National Park, for instance, juvenile Dolly Varden and Slimy Sculpin disappeared from a tributary of the Akillik River after it turned orange. This rusting could threaten rural drinking-water supplies as well.
Researchers speculate that rusting is an unintended consequence of permafrost thaw: as the subsurface softens, groundwater penetrates previously inaccessible minerals, leaching iron, acids, sulfates, and trace metals into surface waters.
Despite political headwinds—reduced funding, staffing, and research priorities under recent federal leadership—press conference speakers stressed that there was no pressure to alter the study’s findings or conclusions.
“We did not encounter political interference,” stated Matthew Druckenmiller of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Thoman argues the annual Arctic Report Card is especially valuable because it consolidates up-to-date data and research on a rapidly evolving system, helping policymakers and the public prepare for conditions that are reshaping the region.
“We need to ready ourselves—individually, as families, as communities, as a state—for conditions that differ from those of the past,” Thoman urged, pointing to recent extreme events such as ex-Typhoon Halong that battered parts of Western Alaska. He called for imagination and preparation for increasingly extreme scenarios.
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