US climate research under siege

A benchmark US report on the fast-changing state of the Arctic has been canceled. The nation's top research body has removed a chapter on global warming from a reference manual for judges.

After the mass layoffs and budget cuts that characterized the early days of President Donald Trump's second term, the administration is barreling ahead with its war on climate science, at a time when the world's oceans and land masses face record-breaking heat.

In 2025, the Arctic Report Card found the polar region had experienced its hottest year since records began, with cascading impacts from melting glaciers and sea ice to greening landscapes and disruptions to global weather.

Driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels, the Arctic is warming several times faster than the global average, a phenomenon known as "Arctic amplification."

"They're literally trying to bury the science," University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann, who co-wrote the recent book "Science Under Siege," told AFP.

"It's a losing effort given the piling up of evidence and the fact that people are seeing and feeling the consequences of climate change so dramatically this summer with the heat domes and wildfires. But that doesn't mean they won't continue to try."

What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic.

For example, losing sea ice injects more freshwater into the North Atlantic, making surface waters less dense and salty and hindering their ability to sink and drive the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which helps keep Europe's winters milder.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has published the Report Card annually since 2006, did not explain its demise, saying only that "Coordination of the 2026 Arctic Report Card will not be facilitated through NOAA" and that prior data would remain publicly available.