The Trump administration is ending National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration services that monitor Arctic sea ice and snow cover, leading climate scientists said on Tuesday.
NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information has decommissioned its snow and ice data products as of Monday, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced.
The data collected by that NOAA office is critical to the daily updates provided by the Colorado-based center, which tracks one of the most obvious effects of climate change: the long-term loss of Arctic sea ice.
It is also critical to the regular sea ice reports produced by Rick Thoman at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, as well as to research done by his UAF colleagues.
Thoman said he learned about the decision Tuesday morning.
“I was completely blindsided,” he said.
Other Arctic-related information that the NSIDC said will be limited by NOAA’s discontinuation of services include gridded monthly analyses of sea ice extent and concentration, a dataset that goes back to 1850; photographic records of glaciers and the World Glacier Inventory, which monitors over 130,000 glaciers worldwide; and a dataset tracking snowpack properties.
The NSIDC, in its notice, said the loss of NOAA data means that regular reports published by the center will be limited to “basic” levels, “meaning they will remain accessible but may not be actively maintained, updated, or fully supported.”
For Thoman, who produces regular reports about ice conditions in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska that put current conditions in historic context, the gap in information is a big loss.
The National Weather Service’s Alaska Sea Ice Program remains in place – for now – so a person in Utqiagvik, for example, will be able to know in real time how far the ice edge is from shore, Thoman said.
But “how is this comparing to last year or 10 years ago, 20 years ago? That will be much more difficult,” he said. Unless the dataset is restored or provided by other sources, that trend analysis may be lost for good, he said.
Gaps in such information pose practical problems in Alaska for activities like infrastructure planning, Thoman said. “You’re doing the Port of Nome construction, you want to know that kind of stuff, right?” he said.
There are some other sources of ice and snow data available to the NSIDC and to Thoman and other scientists at UAF. The European Union’s Copernicus program monitors sea ice, as does the Japan Space Agency, also known as JAXA. But those data collection programs do not provide the same kind of regional information that the NSIDC has been able to provide through the NOAA services, Thoman said.
He sees a common thread in the Arctic data services that NOAA is discontinuing.
“They’re all things that are useful for illustrating change,” he said. “I mean, why on earth would you take away a glacier photo collection?”
NOAA officials did not respond Tuesday to requests for comments.
Arctic sea ice has diminished in extent and thickness over the half century in which satellite observations have been made.
Annual summer melt has become more extensive, leaving far wider areas of the Arctic Ocean open. The annual minimums have declined by about 12.4% per decade since the 1980s, according to the NSIDC. The dark surfaces of open water exposed by ice melt absorb more solar heat than white, ice-covered surfaces do, so loss of sea ice is part of a self-reinforcing warming loop called Arctic Amplification.
Last September’s annual minimum extent was the seventh lowest in the 47-year satellite record, according to the NSIDC.
Even winter sea ice has been declining. This year’s maximum extent at the end of the freeze season in March was the lowest in the satellite record, according to the NSIDC.
What ice exists now in the Arctic Ocean is younger and thinner than sea ice was in the past. In the 1980s, about a third of the sea ice at the peak of the freeze season was over four years old, and a third was thinner, single-year ice, according to government scientists. But in recent years, less than 5% of peak winter sea ice has been over four years old, and two-thirds of that winter ice has been thinner single-year ice, according to the center.
Up to now, NOAA has been deeply involved in tracking climate change in the Arctic. It has been issuing an annual Arctic Report Card since 2006, for example. Last year’s report card provided information about how the tundra regions of the Arctic have become net carbon emitters, a change from their past status as carbon sinks.
But NOAA’s climate change research is a specific target for elimination in Project 2025, a governing plan published by the conservative Heritage Foundation prior to last year’s election. Seen as a blueprint for a second Trump administration, the document refers to NOAA and several of its agencies, including he National Weather Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, as “a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” that is “harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” Several Project 2025 authors are now members of the Trump administration, and the administration has already fired large numbers of NOAA employees and slashed the agency’s funding.
The Arctic data services are not alone in being discontinued by NOAA.
NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service has announced plans to end data services about ocean currents, underwater terrain, the U.S. hot springs inventory and earthquakes, among other subjects.
One of the services on the chopping block is NOAA’s Marine Environmental Buoy Database, scheduled to be discontinued at the end of the month. The buoys collect and transmit data on weather and ocean conditions, and they are used to increase marine safety.
Last month, the Alaska state Senate passed a resolution asking NOAA to not only maintain the buoy system it has in marine waters off the state’s coast but to improve the system by repairing buoys that are currently out of service.
• Yereth Rosen came to Alaska in 1987 to work for the Anchorage Times. She has reported for Reuters, for the Alaska Dispatch News, for Arctic Today and for other organizations. She covers environmental issues, energy, climate change, natural resources, economic and business news, health, science and Arctic concerns. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
