2023 Arctic Report Card proves "time for action is now" on human-caused climate change, NOAA says

Not unlike the rest of the Earth, this summer was the hottest ever recorded in the Arctic, where scientists say human-caused climate change is heating things up faster than anywhere else in the world. Marked consequences of that have already been seen and felt in communities in and around the planet's northernmost polar region, and their domino effects could end up being even more severe and widespread than they are now.

Citing its latest Arctic Report Card — an annual assessment of how the region is faring environmentally and released this week — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that ongoing carbon emissions, in the United States and beyond, will only continue to drive dramatic changes in the Arctic that in turn contribute to extreme weather events in places far from there. Officials with the agency urged people to take action.

"The overriding message from this year's report card is that the time for action is now," said Rick Spinrad, the administrator of the NOAA, in a statement. "NOAA and our federal partners have ramped up our support and collaboration with state, tribal and local communities to help build climate resilience. At the same time, we as a nation and global community must dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are driving these changes."

In its 18th year, the Arctic Report Card summarizes the work of 82 authors from 13 countries. Those who contributed to the latest edition shared several stark takeaways, including the fact that summer surface air temperatures in the Arctic were the warmest observed in the Arctic since record-keeping began more than 100 years ago, as well as the fact that 2023 was the region's sixth-warmest year on record overall. 

The report came out after the United Nations' weather agency declared earlier this year that the planet had experienced its hottest three-month stretch on record over the summer, with experts drawing distinct connections to between the soaring temperatures and devastating wildfires that scorched huge areas of land across multiple continents and depleted air quality to an extent that threatened human health. And, more recently, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that 2023 was globally the hottest year on record, too.

Places within and just outside of the Arctic circle faced consistent weather extremes this year, the new report noted, as precipitation in those areas rose above long-term averages during all four seasons. Local communities and Indigenous people across the polar region continued to suffer outsize consequences of the environmental shifts caused by climate change, it said. Storms of increasing intensity and frequency, as well as unpredictable fishing conditions drastically impacting food security and business for Indigenous people in Alaska, are some prominent examples of that.

The Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub contributed its observations to the Arctic Report Card in 2023 for the first time. The observatory, which works with coastal Indigenous observers to document long-term environmental changes and their impacts in northern Alaska, said the area has experienced "sea ice loss, warmer air and ocean temperatures, changing wind patterns, and increased intensity and frequency of coastal storms that contribute to flooding and erosion." 

The observatory noted that extreme weather has affected cultural infrastructure, traditional harvests and activities, and travel safety over land and sea. Included in the report was a message sent by one observer, Bobby Schaeffer, to the Alaska observatory in September 2022, which said, "We had three strong storms. The July 18 storm had the strongest winds. Southwest winds to 50 mph brought in a storm surge that set the record... Wind, huge surf and a lot of rain. The second storm hit us on July 28 and Merbok on September 14 [to 18]... I think we lost more earth to the ocean than ever before."

Changes in the Arctic region directly impacted some of the extreme weather this summer across large and more southern parts of North America, with experts linking "unprecedented" polar temperature increases to the warmer spring and early snowmelt over northern Canada that laid the foundation for its worst wildfire season to date. 

The consequences could extend further, as the 2023 report showed a continued decline in sea ice extent and melting on the highest point on Greenland's ice sheet — which has only happened five times in 34 years. A separate study on melting in Greenland, published in November, showed that ice shelved in the region lost more than 1/3 of its volume in the last 50 years because of rising temperatures. If that trend continues, scientists warned of "dramatic consequences" for the planet, since the Greenland ice sheet is one of the major contributors to rising sea levels across the world.

The 2023 Arctic Report Card showcased communities and organizations, like the Alaska Arctic Observatory, that are working on solutions to combat climate change and its far-reaching impacts. 

In Finland, an organization called the Snowchange Cooperative has also helped create huge improvements to sprawling peatlands degraded through mining and industrial forestry. Rural Finnish and Indigenous Sámi communities worked with the organization to successfully restore more than 100,000 acres of mined and drained Finnish peatlands when the report was written. Another rural northern community in the remote Svalbard, Norway — the fastest-warming place on Earth — is also taking significant steps to cut emissions that are melting its surrounding glaciers. 

In:
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Climate Change