The Arctic is the area at the northernmost part of our Earth. It’s covered mostly by ice and snow. But that has been changing — quickly. Scientists from NOAA began publishing a report card for the Arctic in 2006 to understand what was happening. On December 16, 2025, the U.S. government group released its 20th Arctic Report Card. And the grade isn’t good.
More than 100 scientists from 13 countries worked on this year’s Arctic Report Card. These experts saw major changes taking place at the top of the planet. After all, the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else in the world. Their report showed warming in the air, in the ocean, and on land.
Changes in the Air
Scientists measured surface air temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025. They found that the Arctic air was the warmest ever recorded — going back to 1900. In fact, the last 10 years mark the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic. And warming weather allows for more precipitation, including snow and rain. Well, last year’s precipitation set a record high.
Changes in the Ocean
The warming Arctic has affected the water — and ice — of the polar region. Scientists can tell by studying the Arctic winter sea ice at the end of each winter in March. They’ve used
to measure that for the past 47 years. In March 2025, the Arctic winter sea ice reached its lowest maximum extent ever. In addition, most of the oldest, thickest Arctic sea ice has disappeared since the 1980s. The only old sea ice left is in the north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago.
Changes on the Land
Across the Arctic,
have gotten smaller or disappeared. Only about half as much snow covered the Arctic in June 2025 compared to June 1965. And the giant sheet of ice that covers Greenland continues to shrink. It lost about 129 billion tons of ice in 2025. Melting glaciers and ice sheets cause sea levels to rise around the world. As Alaska’s
thaws,
metals end up in rivers and streams. That makes “rusting rivers,” polluting the water for people and animals.
Twila Moon was a lead author of the NOAA report. “The Arctic is really the freezer of our world,” said the scientist from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “It’s supposed to be very cold,” she told News-O-Matic.
Moon explained that a whiter, icier Arctic helps reflect sunlight back into space. And a frozen also stores huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane underground. If they escape into the air, those gases trap heat on our planet — making climate change worse. “So, it’s much better if the Arctic’s surfaces are white and covered in ice,” said Moon. “We’d really like the Arctic to be staying cooler,” she added.
You may live far from the Arctic. Yet the events there can still affect your life. “We live in a shared place,” Moon explained. “And changes in the Arctic can actually reach all the way down to places very far away.” For example, when glaciers melt in the Arctic, “that melt gets added to our ocean — and may cause flooding in new places that haven’t experienced it before.”
Do you want to help keep the Arctic cool? Moon recommends “talking with other people and then joining together to take action.” That could include “writing letters to our leaders, asking for solar power, or eating more vegetables rather than meat.” The scientist said there are “lots of points of action you can take” to help.
“There are many different things that can be done,” added Moon, “and they’re all important right now.”
By Russell Kahn (Russ)
Updated December 18, 2025, 5:00 P.M. (ET)
