Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.
The Arctic Report Card, an annual, peer-reviewed evaluation of the state of our warming Arctic, will still be published this year despite a lack of financial or logistical support from NOAA.
On 10 August, editors of the Arctic Report Card were informed that NOAA will no longer support its publication, meaning the agency will not provide the report with coordinating editors, coordinate its external peer review, or fund the report’s web presence, publicity, graphics, or summary video.
After a meeting of non-NOAA editors and chapter authors, however, the Arctic Report Card team has decided to move forward with publishing the 2026 report. Many of the report’s authors had been well into their work on their chapters when they learned that NOAA would no longer support that work.
“While many of the details are not final, we will be producing an ARC sans NOAA this year,” Rick Thoman, an Arctic scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and an editor of the 2026 report, wrote in a message to Eos. Thoman said the team is not yet sharing which organization will host the 2026 Arctic Report Card, but that there has been a “tremendous outpouring of support for the Arctic Report Card, from individuals to large organizations.”
He said the team plans to move forward with the original plan to present the report’s findings in a press conference at the 2026 AGU Annual Meeting in San Francisco, Calif. this December. Thoman also said the group of editors and authors is “pursuing multiple avenues” to produce the report’s graphics and summary video, and that they are planning to establish a non-NOAA website to serve as a long-term home for the Arctic Report Card in future years.
“A lot of what we’re doing right now is, ‘How do we get this year’s report card out?’” he said. “But we are looking at the longer term, [also].”
The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), part of the Arctic Council (an international Arctic policy and research collaboration), previously found reviewers and carried out the review process for the report. According to Thoman, AMAP has committed to providing that service for the 2026 report card.
Science for Stakeholders
Having support from NOAA gave the report a heightened credibility for stakeholders, said Walter Meier, a sea ice scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and a longtime author of the report’s sea ice chapter. “NOAA has had a strong reputation for providing high quality data, high quality observations, analysis, and research,” he said. “When you have that NOAA stamp of approval, people trust in that.”
“I’m confident that the science will be of the same high quality.”
Still, he said not much would change about the scientific content of the report once it is hosted by a new organization. “I’m confident that the science will be of the same high quality,” he said. “I don’t feel there will be any loss [of quality], which is really the most important part.”
The report being outside of NOAA’s purview also “allows much more flexibility in language,” for the authors, Thoman said. He added that creating an Arctic Report Card without NOAA may allow the report to be more internationally focused than it has been previously.
—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer
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