[Chapter 1]
The story is clear. The Arctic is warmer, less frozen, and transforming biologically.

Rising temperatures and the loss of ice in all its forms are at the root of rapid changes occurring across the region.

These resulting and interconnected climate impacts from Greenland's melting ice cap, to warming seas, from greening tundra, to the rising incidence of wildfire, from changing migration patterns to the varying health of Arctic whale populations, all point to a very different future.

In 2020, Arctic air temperatures were among the highest on record, and sea ice reached the second lowest extent at the end of summer, repeating an accelerating pattern documented over decades of observation.

2020 also marks the 15th year of the Arctic Report Card.

It was clear from the beginning that the Arctic was changing. The details were less understood then, and the rate of change
has been extraordinary.

This annual snapshot of the Arctic helps increase our awareness of long-term patterns and their impacts on people everywhere.


[Chapter 2]
Wildfires are ravaging the high northern latitudes.

In 2019, in Alaska, more than 3,800 square miles burned, almost 10 times the area of California's wildfires.

In Russia, the burning acreage was three times that of Alaska, and fires burned within 11 kilometers of the Arctic Ocean.

Northern ecosystems are particularly susceptible to warming trends linked to climate change, and these increasingly intense fires are the dominant ecological disturbance there.

With prolonged warm dry weather, accumulated and recently unfrozen organic matter becomes ready fuel for large, naturally occurring, and rapidly propagating fires. Additionally, the warmer temperatures have contributed to so-called zombie fires, which smolder underground throughout the Arctic winter, and may even reemerge the following year.

Arctic fires have large impacts on the global carbon cycle through direct emissions, and accelerated decomposition in thawing permafrost, putting these high northern latitudes at increased risk of more frequent, severe, and larger fires.


[Chapter 3]
Bowhead whales are remarkable.

Found only in the icy seas of the far North, they live longer than any other mammal.

Bowheads are also a culturally significant source of food for many Indigenous communities.

Unfortunately, commercial whalers once hunted the Bowhead to the brink of extinction, but following decades of protection and sustainable management efforts, populations in the Pacific Arctic, and between Canada and Greenland are doing well. One of the great conservation success stories of the last century.

However, the small Bowhead populations east of Greenland, and in the Sea of Okhotsk are still faring poorly.

Warming oceans, changing weather and current patterns, pollution and entanglement all impact these whales.

Sea ice habitat loss also increases their exposure to their only natural predator, the Orca.

Rapid changes in Bowhead whale habitat may challenge the continued recovery of the only Arctic endemic baleen whale, signaling the continuing need for monitoring of their health and numbers.