2025 Headlines and Overview

Twenty years of tracking rapid Arctic warming and change

Now in its 20th year, the Arctic Report Card (ARC) 2025 provides a clear view of a region warming far faster than the rest of the planet. Along with reports on the state of the Arctic’s atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, and tundra, this year’s report highlights major transformations underway—atlantification bringing warmer, saltier waters northward, boreal species expanding northward into Arctic ecosystems, and “rivers rusting” as thawing permafrost mobilizes iron and other metals. Across these changing landscapes, sustained observations and strong research partnerships, including those led by communities and Indigenous organizations, remain essential for understanding and adaptation.

Headlines

In the air

• Surface air temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest recorded since 1900.
• Autumn 2024 and winter 2025 were especially warm across the Arctic with temperatures ranking 1st and 2nd warmest, respectively.
• The last 10 years are the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic.
• Since 2006, Arctic annual temperature has increased at more than double the global rate of temperature changes.
• Precipitation from October 2024 to September 2025 set a new record high.
• Arctic precipitation totals for winter, spring, and autumn were each among the top five since 1950.

In the ocean

• In March 2025, Arctic winter sea ice reached the lowest annual maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record.
• September 2025 saw the 10th lowest minimum sea ice extent. All of the 19 lowest September minimum ice extents have occurred in the last 19 years.
• In August 2025, the marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean’s Atlantic sector saw average sea surface temperatures ~13°F (~7°C) warmer than the 1991-2020 August average.
• The oldest, thickest Arctic sea ice (> 4 years) has declined by more than 95% since the 1980s. Multi-year sea ice is now largely confined to the area north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago.
• Arctic Ocean regions that are ice-free in August have warmed by 2.3°F since 1982.
• From 2003 to 2025, phytoplankton productivity spiked by 80% in the Eurasian Arctic, 34% in the Barents Sea, and 27% in Hudson Bay.
• Plankton productivity in 2025 was higher than the 2003-22 average in eight of nine regions assessed across the Arctic.
• Atlantification—an influx of water properties from lower latitudes—has reached the central Arctic Ocean, hundreds of miles from the former edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
• Atlantification weakens the Arctic Ocean’s layering of waters of different densities, therefore enhancing heat transfer, melting sea ice, and threatening ocean circulation patterns that exert a long-term influence on the weather.
• 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.

On land

• Glaciers in Arctic Scandinavia and Svalbard experienced the largest annual net loss of ice on record between 2023 and 2024.
• The Greenland Ice Sheet lost an estimated 129 billion tons of ice in 2025, less than the annual average of 219 billion tons between 2003 and 2024, but continuing the long-term trend of net loss.
• 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.
• Throughout the Arctic, snowpack was higher than normal during the 2024/25 snow season and remained high through May. Despite this, by June snow cover extent dropped below normal, consistent with levels the past 15 years.
• June snow cover extent over the Arctic today is half of what it was six decades ago.
• 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 “rusting rivers”, the increased acidity and elevated levels of toxic metals degrade water quality, compromising aquatic habitat and eroding biodiversity.
• Scientists are studying the causes of rusting rivers and impacts to rural drinking water supplies and subsistence fisheries.
• 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.
• For more than 20 years, the Indigenous Sentinels Network has supported Arctic communities by strengthening Indigenous-led observations of weather, wildlife, and environmental change.
• 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.

20 Years of Partnerships with the Arctic Report Card

• The Arctic Report Card is sustained by a wide network of partnerships—spanning Indigenous communities, local and regional organizations, national institutions, and international science networks—that together strengthen our understanding of a rapidly changing Arctic.
• The Arctic Report Card’s long-standing partnership with the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme brings together rigorous peer review and timely reporting to strengthen internationally coordinated assessments of Arctic change.
• Indigenous knowledge and leadership are critically important to understanding the changing Arctic. The Arctic Report Card has been strengthened by partnerships with Indigenous communities.
• Despite a robust Arctic observing network, gaps in coverage hinder scientists’ ability to monitor key environmental changes, affecting critical assessments of water availability, resource management, and food security.