The Arctic just lost its report card.

For two decades, scientists have put out an annual checkup on the Arctic, reporting on sea ice, wildlife, permafrost, and painting the full picture of a region warming about three times faster than the rest of the planet. It’s called the Arctic Report Card, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has backed it since its beginning in 2006.

Not anymore.

On August 10, NOAA told the report’s scientists it was pulling all agency support. There will be no funding, no staff, no hosting, no press rollout. And no reason why. The 21st edition was already underway. Now it’s up to the lead authors to figure out, on their own, whether they can put it out at all.

That matters because of what the report has been finding.

Last December’s edition, compiled by 112 scientists from 13 countries, recorded the warmest Arctic surface air temperatures since 1900 and confirmed that the region’s oldest, thickest sea ice has declined by over 95% since the 1980s. It documented over 200 rivers turning orange as thawing permafrost releases iron into Arctic watersheds, poisoning drinking water and fish habitat.

For two decades, this report has charted an Arctic in freefall and helped us brace for it. That’s what NOAA just walked away from.

This isn’t a one-off. It’s a pattern.

This is the same agency that quietly dropped its news release on last year’s Arctic Report Card findings, so outside groups had to spread the word. The same agency that shut down its billion-dollar damage database tracking costly weather events. The same administration that dismissed every author working on the Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment.

Add it up, and the logic is hard to miss: it’s not that the data disappears. It’s that anyone willing to tell you what it means gets pushed out first.

And this timing is no accident.

We’re heading into an El Niño year, when the need for solid climate data only grows. Sea ice, permafrost, and shifting Arctic conditions all ripple out into the weather that affects us all. Gutting the report that tracks those shifts, right as they accelerate, isn’t an oversight. It’s a choice. A choice that puts us all in jeopardy.

Because the Arctic doesn’t stop breaking down just because Washington stops publishing the data. Looking away from the numbers won’t stop the ice from thinning. The problem hasn’t disappeared. We just lost the warning that buys us time to act.

We’ve watched this fight before, and we’ve watched pressure move it. Pushback is what got Congress to reject Trump’s proposed cuts to NASA, NSF, and NOAA back in January. It’s what got OMB to release the funding it was sitting on for a Colorado climate lab before the layoffs hit.

None of that means this fight is over. The same administration is back for more, this time coming for the Arctic Report Card. But it proves something worth holding onto: when enough people refuse to stay quiet, Congress listens.

Join us as we make sure the Arctic Report Card doesn’t go quiet!