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'Changes in the Heart of Winter': NOAA Report Documents Warmest Arctic Year on Record
"After 20 years of continuous reporting, the Report Card stands as a chronicle of change and a caution for what the future will bring," report contributors said.
Dec 17, 2025
The Arctic just experienced its warmest air temperatures on record between October 2024 and September 2025 as the climate crisis dramatically alters the region, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found in its 20th Arctic Report Card.
The annual report, released Tuesday, also notes the Arctic's lowest maximum sea-ice extent and its wettest year on record. The past 10 years have been the warmest recorded in a region that is heating at two to four times the global average.
"After 20 years of continuous reporting, the Report Card stands as a chronicle of change and a caution for what the future will bring," report editors Matthew Langdon Druckenmiller, Rick Thoman, and Twila A. Moon wrote in the executive summary. "Transformations over the next 20 years will reshape Arctic environments and ecosystems, impact the well-being of Arctic residents, and influence the trajectory of the global climate system itself, which we all depend on."
Arctic warming is not confined to the spring and summer months, but marks a full-year transformation, with fall 2024 being the warmest Arctic fall on record and winter 2025 the second-warmest winter. While snow levels do remain high in the winter months, they consistently drop by June, with snow cover during that month now about half of 1960s levels. Precipitation in the winter months is also not limited to snow.
"We can point to the Arctic as a far away place but the changes there affect the rest of the world.”
At sea, ice extent is also shrinking in the winter, with March 2025 seeing the lowest maximum sea-ice extent in nearly 50 years of satellite data. The oldest, thickest ice has shrunk by over 95% since the 1980s, and its domain has constricted to areas north of Greenland and the Canadian archipelago.
“There’s been a steady decline in sea ice and unfortunately we are seeing rain now even in winter,” Druckenmiller told the Guardian. “We are seeing changes in the heart of winter, when we expect the Arctic to be cold. The whole concept of winter is being redefined in the Arctic.”
Warming temperatures are also driving changes in ecosystems, with more southern species and conditions shifting northward both on land and at sea. On land, this happens via the "greening" of the tundra and the spread of boreal species into the Arctic. At sea, warmer, saltier water is shifting north, driving the "Atlantification" of the Arctic, which exacerbates ice melt and threatens to destabilize ocean circulation patterns.
Changes are also occurring on the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean, with Arctic species declining by two-thirds in the northern Bering Sea and one-half in the Chukchi Sea.
“We are no longer just documenting warming—we are witnessing an entire marine ecosystem transform within a single generation,” Hannah-Marie Ladd, director of the Indigenous Sentinels Network on the Aleut community of Saint Paul Island, said at a conference unveiling the report.
Ocean warming, the melting of glaciers, and melting permafrost are increasing weather hazards and other dangers for Arctic communities. For example, warm ocean temperatures fueled ex-Typhoon Halong in October 2025, which forced over 1,500 people to evacuate from Alaska's southwestern coast and nearly destroyed two villages.
Glacier melt has increased the risk of sudden flooding and landslides, while the melting of permafrost is leading to the phenomenon of "rusting rivers," as oxidized iron from melting permafrost enters the water and degrades water quality.
These impacts aren't limited to the Arctic. The Greenland ice sheet, for example, lost 129 billion tons of sea ice, which contributes to global sea-level rise.
“We are seeing cascading impacts from a warming Arctic,” Climate Central scientist Zack Labe told the Guardian. “Coastal cities aren’t ready for the rising sea levels, we have completely changed the fisheries in the Arctic, which leads to rising food bills for seafood. We can point to the Arctic as a far away place but the changes there affect the rest of the world.”
The report comes as the Trump administration has moved to censure federal climate scientists and cut staffing and funding for government science.
Outside researchers noted that the administration did not seem to have significantly altered the content of the 2025 Arctic Report Card.
“I honestly did not see much of a tone shift in comparison to previous Arctic report cards in years past, which was great to see,” Climate Central media director Tom Di Liberto told NBC News. “The implications of their findings are the same as past Arctic report cards. The Arctic is the canary in the coal mine.”
"The Trump administration’s cuts to budgets, staffing, and resources for science are already affecting data and research related to the Arctic."
Druckenmiller also told reporters that the team “did not receive any political interference with our results.”
However, the 2024 Arctic Report Card urged a "global reductions of fossil fuel pollution," in its subhead, an exhortation missing from the 2025 version.
The 2025 report did refer to the impacts of federal funding cuts, discussing "vulnerabilities and risks facing nationally and internationally coordinated observing programs, especially amid risks of diminishing US investments in climate and environmental observations," as Druckenmiller, Thoman, and Moon wrote.
"The Trump administration’s cuts to budgets, staffing, and resources for science are already affecting data and research related to the Arctic," the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) posted on social media in response to the release.
However, even if the report did not highlight the causes of the climate emergency, it's ultimate message was unmistakable, UCS said: "It’s clear that fossil fueled climate change is having an alarming effect on the vital signs of this unique, crucial region of the world."
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The Time Has Come to Establish the International Arctic Ocean Sanctuary
In addition to accelerating efforts to reduce global carbon emissions to reverse global warming, governments must urgently adopt strong, permanent protections for the entire Arctic Ocean.
Jun 08, 2025
On World Ocean Day, and the eve of the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France opening Monday, the Arctic Ocean ecological crisis needs to be top of the list for attention by governments.
Given the well-documented, catastrophic decline of the Arctic Ocean sea ice ecosystem in recent decades due to climate change, coupled with the increasing threats and impacts from industry and military activity in the region, it is imperative that governments establish an International Arctic Ocean Sanctuary to preserve this extraordinary ecoregion as a global commons for peaceful, non-commercial, scientific purposes.
Covering approximately 5.4 million square miles, the Arctic Ocean is one of the most extraordinary and vibrant regions of the global ocean, and plays an important role regulating Earth’s climate.
Combined with the effects of climate change, industrialization and militarization would further accelerate the ecological and social collapse of the struggling Arctic Ocean region.
The Arctic marine ecosystem is globally unique, productive, and remains relatively unexplored. The ocean biome supports more than 7,000 identified species, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth—polar bears, walrus, several kinds of ice seals, narwhals, beluga whales, bowhead whales, some of the largest populations of seabirds in the world, and many unique fish and invertebrate populations. It hosts cold seeps, hydrothermal vents, stunning benthic habitats, a rich pelagic ecosystem that remains surprisingly active during winter darkness, and supports the subsistence cultures of coastal Indigenous Peoples.
However, this unique polar marine ecosystem is now one of the most endangered regions of Earth’s biosphere, suffering effects of climate change more severely than anywhere else. Arctic sea ice has declined by more than half in the last 50 years, losing about 1 million square miles in both summer and winter, has thinned from an average of four meters to about one meter, and could disappear entirely in summer by 2035. Multiyear sea ice has all but vanished. This remarkable decline has been caused by global carbon emissions from human activity, mainly fossil fuel use.
The loss of Arctic sea ice over the last half-century constitutes one of the largest declines in ecological habitat on Earth, rivaling the loss of tropical rainforests. The resultant Arctic Ocean ecological crisis is now severe, and predicted to get much worse in coming decades.
In addition to devastating impacts of climate change in the Arctic Ocean, commercial interests are clamoring to exploit ice-free offshore areas for oil and gas, methane hydrates, minerals, commercial fishing, shipping, and tourism. And Arctic coastal nations have made Extended Continental Shelf (ECS) seabed claims (pursuant to U.N. Law of the Sea, Article 76) beyond their 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), a dangerous territorial expansion into international waters with an eye toward resource extraction.
As Arctic nations and others (China, India, etc.) advance their own parochial interests across the region, there is a growing competitive race to exploit Arctic offshore resources and to project military power across the region to secure these competing national interests. As such, the risk of military confrontation across the Arctic Ocean is escalating. Combined with the effects of climate change, industrialization and militarization would further accelerate the ecological and social collapse of the struggling Arctic Ocean region, and would clearly compromise the ability of the bioregion and its people to survive the 21st-century climate crisis.
In fact, the resource and political tensions in the Arctic Ocean today are remarkably similar to the Antarctic after World War II, that were resolved then by the leadership of U.S. (Republican) President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposing and negotiating the historic 1959 Antarctic Treaty. The international Treaty, now with 58 nation-state members, permanently protects the extraordinary 5.5 million square-mile Antarctic continent as a global commons for peaceful, scientific purposes, free from nuclear testing, military operations, economic exploitation, and territorial claims. The Antarctic Treaty remains the single greatest conservation achievement in history.
The same opportunity now presents itself with the Arctic Ocean. In addition to accelerating efforts to reduce global carbon emissions to reverse global warming, governments must urgently adopt strong, permanent protections for the entire Arctic Ocean to give this region and its people the best chance possible to survive the 21st-century climate crisis. Given the pace of decline, this may be our last best chance to do so.
While Arctic nations have begun protecting some areas off their coasts, still less than 5% of Arctic Ocean waters are in permanently protected status. This is clearly insufficient.
The proposed circumpolar Arctic Ocean Sanctuary must fully protect not only international waters beyond coastal state 200-mile EEZs across the 1.1 million square mile Central Arctic Ocean (as is currently proposed), but also the highly productive waters within the EEZs of Arctic coastal nations—Canada, Norway, Denmark and Greenland, Russia, and the U.S., where most ecological activity, human impact, and threat occurs. The sanctuary should permanently prohibit oil and gas leasing, mineral leasing, commercial fishing, military activities, improve shipping safety, reduce pollutants, and enhance scientific research.
To be sure, it is a big ask of the five Arctic coastal nations to contribute some of their claimed territory into a globally protected area, but this was the right thing to do in 1959 in the Antarctic, and it is the right thing to do now for the Arctic.
While the current federal administrations in the Russia and U.S. habitually oppose any and all environmental conservation proposals, perhaps presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump might see this as a historic legacy in the midst of the environmental havoc they have caused, a chance to be remembered as Eisenhower is today for his leadership in negotiating the Antarctic Treaty. And just to note, former President Joe Biden ignored this request entirely, enacted no comprehensive permanent protections in the U.S. Arctic Ocean off Alaska, and made no effort to begin discussions on the International Arctic Ocean Sanctuary.
Global society has a historic choice to make with the imperiled Arctic Ocean. Should we continue our competitive industrial and military expansion into one of the last wild areas of the world, further degrading a region already unraveling due to human-caused climate change? Or should we protect and sustain this magnificent place for all time, giving it and its inhabitants, human and non-human, the best chance possible to recover from climate change this century?
How we answer this question will tell us a lot about ourselves and our future.
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'Grim News for the Planet' as Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low
"The environment does not care about politics. Keep spewing greenhouse gases and face the consequences."
Mar 06, 2025
European Union officials said the Copernicus Climate Change Service had issued its latest "stark reminder of why climate action is urgent" when the bloc's program announced that it observed less sea ice covering the Earth's oceans last month than at any other point in recorded history.
In the Arctic, sea ice reached its lowest monthly extent on record, at 8% below average, in early February, and it remained below the previous record for the rest of the month.
The oceans were missing an area of ice roughly the size of the United Kingdom last month, according to Copernicus (C3S), and the finding was not an anomaly in recent sea ice observations.
February marked the third consecutive month in which record low sea ice levels for the corresponding month were observed in the Arctic.
C3S reported that in the Antarctic, sea ice levels have rapidly declined in 2025 after appearing to recover to near-record levels in December 2024.
Last month, sea ice near the South Pole reached its fourth-lowest monthly extent, at 26% below average.
C3S said the daily sea ice extent in the Antarctic may have also reached its annual minimum toward the end of the month, which will be confirmed later in March; if confirmed, it would be the second-lowest annual minimum in the satellite record.
"February 2025 continues the streak of record or near-record temperatures observed throughout the last two years," said Samanatha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. "One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice, and the record or near-record low sea ice cover at both poles has pushed global sea ice cover to an all-time minimum."
The melting sea ice was recorded as global average temperatures rose 1.59°C (2.8°F) above the pre-industrial average last month, making it the third-warmest February on record.
In Europe, the temperatures that most exceeded averages were recorded last month in parts of Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Alps. Outside of Europe, "temperatures were most above average over large parts of the Arctic."
The low extent of sea ice will lead to "more solar heat absorbed by the darker oceans," and "faster warming," said Simon Oldridge, a climate campaigner.
The loss of sea ice can also lead to the collapse of ocean currents that are crucial for marine life to thrive.
C3S reported on the record-low sea ice levels as campaigners in the U.S. and around the world condemned recent anti-climate actions taken by U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, including the country's exit from the Paris climate agreement, the GOP's passing of a bill to end a federal program aimed at reducing planet-heating methane emissions, and Trump's push to fast-track fossil fuel projects—as scientists warn that new extractive projects have no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating and avoiding its worst impacts.
"The environment does not care about politics," said public health expert Ali Khan. "Keep spewing greenhouse gases and face the consequences."
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Arctic Summers Could Be Virtually Ice-Free Within a Decade, Study Warns
The fossil fuel-driven climate crisis is causing Arctic sea ice to disappear more rapidly than expected, according to new research.
Mar 06, 2024
The Arctic could be almost completely without sea ice during the summer within the next decade, according to a new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
The study states that rising temperatures from the human-caused climate crisis are leading to increasing reductions in sea ice during the summer.
"These reductions are projected to continue with ongoing warming, ultimately leading to an ice-free Arctic," the study says. "In the September monthly mean, the earliest ice-free conditions (the first single occurrence of an ice-free Arctic) could occur in 2020–2030s under all emission trajectories and are likely to occur by 2050."
Well, I certainly wouldn't bet against this.
In fact, given the pace of change, I would be surprised if it didn't happen.https://t.co/7DPdhMi2ti
— Bill McGuire (@ProfBillMcGuire) March 5, 2024
An Arctic that is nearly completely without sea ice for the summer months would be an environment that is quite different—and dangerous—for indigenous animals like polar bears and seals. Though the Arctic is expected to become ice-free eventually, the study states that when this will occur will depend on how quickly humans stop burning fossil fuels.
“This would transform the Arctic into a completely different environment, from a white summer Arctic to a blue Arctic. So even if ice-free conditions are unavoidable, we still need to keep our emissions as low as possible to avoid prolonged ice-free conditions," Alexandra Jahn, an associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder and a lead author of the research, told The Guardian.
Jahn said that if humans are able to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the future, the sea ice would eventually return. Many scientists are studying different ways to accomplish carbon removal—an approach that many climate advocates have criticized as a false solution—but experts say reducing greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible is the main priority.
A study from last year found that ice-free summers in the Arctic had become an "unavoidable" future due to climate change. Ice is also disappearing in Antarctica, which is warming more quickly than scientists had anticipated.
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'Cliff-Like' Collapse of Critical Current System More Likely Than Thought: Study
"The new study adds significantly to the rising concern about an AMOC collapse in the not-too-distant future," said one scientist. "We will ignore this at our peril."
Feb 10, 2024
A study published Friday warned that a systemic collapse of the Atlantic Ocean currents driving warm water from the tropics toward Europe could be more likely than researchers previously estimated—an event that would send temperatures plummeting in much of the continent.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, could be headed for a relatively sudden shutdown that René Van Western, who led the Dutch study published in Science Advances, called "cliff-like."
"We are heading towards a tipping point."
For many millennia, the Gulf Stream has carried warm waters from the Gulf of Mexico northward along the eastern North American seaboard and across the Atlantic to Europe. As human-caused global heating melts the Greenland ice sheet, massive quantities of fresh water are released into the North Atlantic, cooling the AMOC—which delivers the bulk of the Gulf Stream's heat—toward a "tipping point" that could stop the current in its tracks.
An AMOC shutdown would cause temperatures to rise in the Southern Hemisphere but plunge dramatically in Europe. In the study's model, London cools by an average of 18°F and Bergen, Norway by 27°F. An AMOC failure would also cause sea levels to rise along North America's east coast.
"We are moving closer [to the collapse], but we we're not sure how much closer," van Westen told The Associated Press. "We are heading towards a tipping point."
According to the study:
Although AMOC collapses have been induced in complex global climate models by strong freshwater forcing, the processes of an AMOC tipping event have so far not been investigated. Here, we show results of the first tipping event in the Community Earth System Model, including the large climate impacts of the collapse. Using these results, we develop a physics-based and observable early warning signal of AMOC tipping: the minimum of the AMOC-induced freshwater transport at the southern boundary of the Atlantic. Reanalysis products indicate that the present-day AMOC is on route to tipping. The early warning signal is a useful alternative to classical statistical ones, which, when applied to our simulated tipping event, turn out to be sensitive to the analyzed time interval before tipping.
"The research makes a convincing case that the AMOC is approaching a tipping point based on a robust, physically based early warning indicator," said Tim Lenton, director of the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute. "What it cannot and does not say is how close the tipping point, because... there is insufficient data to make a statistically reliable estimate of that.
"We have to plan for the worst," added Lenton, who was not involved in the Dutch study. "We should invest in collecting relevant data and improving estimation of how close a tipping point is, improving assessment of what its impacts would be, and getting pre-prepared for how we could best manage and adapt to those impacts if they start to unfold."
Stefan Rahmstorf—who leads the Earth Systems Analysis department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany and was not part of the new study—called the research "a major advance in AMOC stability science."
"The new study adds significantly to the rising concern about an AMOC collapse in the not-too-distant future," Rahmstorf told The Associated Press. "We will ignore this at our peril."
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It's Official, Say NOAA and NASA: This June Was the Hottest Ever Recorded on Earth
NASA called the soaring heat "part of a pattern of increasing global temperatures, as a result of human activities, mainly carbon dioxide emissions."
Jul 13, 2023
As people in much of North America, Europe, and Africa suffer sweltering heatwaves, a pair of U.S. government agencies that track and record weather joined international counterparts Thursday in confirming that last month was the hottest June ever recorded, based on global average temperature.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that the average surface temperature—that includes water and land—in June was 1.89°F above average, a "174-year global climate record."
"Additionally," the agency said, "Earth's ocean surface temperature anomaly—which indicates how much warmer or cooler temperatures are from the long-term average—were the highest ever recorded, according to scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information."
"For the third consecutive month, the global ocean surface temperature hit a record high as weak El Niño conditions that emerged in May continued to strengthen in June," NOAA added. "Globally, June 2023 set a record for the highest monthly sea surface temperature anomaly of any month in NOAA's climate record."
Conversely, NOAA said Thursday that global sea ice coverage receded last month to the lowest level in any June ever observed.
"This primarily was a result of the record-low sea ice in the Antarctic that occurred for the second consecutive month," the agency explained. "Earth's global sea ice extent in June 2023 was 330,000 square miles less than the previous record low from June 2019."
Meanwhile, surface temperature analysis by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies said Thursday that last month was the hottest June in its record book, which dates back to 1880.
"This month is part of a pattern of increasing global temperatures, as a result of human activities, mainly carbon dioxide emissions," the agency said on Twitter.
The U.S. announcements come after the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service also called last month the hottest June ever recorded.
The trend looks to continue. As Common Dreams reported last week, July has already unofficially recorded several of the hottest days of any month since records were first kept. Preliminary WMO data published last week also showed the first week of July as the hottest seven-day period ever.
WMO Director of Climate Services Christopher Hewitt said that the new data show that "we are in uncharted territory and we can expect more records to fall as El Niño develops further and these impacts will extend into 2024."
"This is worrying news for the planet," he added.
Right now in southern Europe and northern Africa, the Cerberus heatwave—named after the three-headed dog guarding the entrance to the underworld in Greek mythology—has sent the mercury soaring over 110°F.
Last summer, which was the hottest on record in Europe, more than 60,000 people across the continent were killed by extreme heat, a study published earlier this week revealed.
In the United States, a transcontinental heat dome has more than 130 million people in 15 states under extreme weather alerts this week. Deadly heatwaves are also gripping large swaths of the Middle East and Asia.
This month's record temperatures, deadly flooding, and other extreme weather around the world driven by human-caused global heating have sparked renewed calls in the United States for President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.
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Russia Warming Over Two Times Faster Than Rest of Planet
Country's environment ministry issues climate change warning in annual report
Dec 25, 2015
Russia is warming 2.5 times the global average. The country's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection revealed Friday in its annual report that it faces a dramatic rise in related threats, from floods to fires.
"Growth of average temperatures in Russia in 1976-2014 was 0.42 degrees Celsius in 10 years, which is 2.5 times more than global temperatures on Earth for the same period--0.17 degrees Celsius in 10 years," the ministry wrote, according to media reports.
"Climate change leads to growth of dangerous meteorological phenomena," the ministry continued, citing dramatic floods and severe forest fires last year. According to the agency's calculations, Russia faced 569 events in 2014--marking the greatest number since the ministry began keeping track.
The report charts temperature fluctuations affecting the climate, leading to ice melting, sea levels rising, floods, droughts and other phenomena.
Coming in the wake of the Paris climate talks, the ministry's findings underscore the urgency of climate change. The conclusions are further significant given President Vladimir Putin's historic refusal to acknowledge the crisis.
What's more, the ministry's findings follow a report released released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration earlier this month which found that loss of sea ice, and climbing temperatures in the Barents Sea, off the coast of Norway and Russia, are already causing "a poleward shift in fish communities."
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Rushing for the Arctic's Riches
Dec 08, 2013
For Russia, which recently seized a Greenpeace ship and is prosecuting 30 of the group's activists for attempting to scale an oil platform, the temptation to exploit the Arctic Ocean is especially powerful. Russia's economy is heavily dependent on exports of oil and gas, and the government relies on these sales for much of its income. Until recently, the Russians could draw on reservoirs in western Siberia to satisfy their needs, but now, with many of these fields in decline, they are counting on Arctic supplies to maintain current production levels. "Our first and main task is to turn the Arctic into Russia's resource base of the 21st century," Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the president, declared in 2008.
The Russians have explored drilling options in several offshore areas of the Arctic. In the Pechora Sea, above northwestern Siberia, the Russian energy giant Gazprom has installed its Prirazlomnaya platform -- the one protesting Greenpeace activists attempted to board. Further east, in the Kara Sea, the state-owned Rosneft is collaborating with ExxonMobil to develop promising deposits; Rosneft has also teamed up with Statoil of Norway and Eni of Italy to investigate prospects in the Barents Sea.
But Russia is hardly alone in seeking to exploit the Arctic. Norway, like Russia, derives considerable income from gas and oil exports and is under pressure to develop reserves in the Barents Sea to compensate for the decline of its existing fields in the North and Norwegian Seas. Other areas of the Arctic are also being eyed for development. Cairn Energy of Edinburgh has sunk exploratory wells in waters off Greenland, for example, while Royal Dutch Shell is attempting to develop fields off Alaska.
For all of its promise, however, the Arctic is not likely to surrender its resources easily. Sea ice covers much of the area in winter, and storms pose a constant danger. Global warming is likely to reduce the extent of sea ice in the summer and fall, permitting extended drilling operations, but it could also produce unruly weather and other perils. Adding another layer of risk, many of the boundary lines in the Arctic remain to be fully demarcated, and various Arctic powers have threatened to use military force in the event that one or another intrudes on what they view as their sovereign territory.
The severe challenges of operating in the Arctic have already proved daunting for Shell, which has spent $4.5 billion to exploit reserves off Alaska but has yet to drill a single producing well. Some of these challenges are legal -- indigenous communities and environmentalists, fearing the contamination of local waters and a threat to wildlife, have filed lawsuits to prevent the company from drilling.
In addition, the Arctic itself has proved to be a formidable adversary: In the summer of 2012, during Royal Dutch Shell's first attempt to probe its Arctic deposits, shifting winds and floating ice halted drilling. Several months later, when one of its drilling rigs ran aground during an especially severe storm, Shell announced that it would suspend operations in Alaska's Arctic waters and that before it proceeded, it would bolster its capacity to operate there.
Shell's misfortunes have heightened concern that Arctic drilling poses an unacceptable threat to the region. Any major spill that occurs there is likely to prove far more destructive than the one produced in the Gulf of Mexico by the Deepwater Horizon disaster in April 2010, because of both the lack of adequate response capabilities and the likelihood that ice floes and sea ice will impede cleanup operations. As more companies push into the Arctic and accelerate their operations there, the risk of accidents and spills is bound to increase. The fact that Shell -- one of the most technically advanced oil companies -- has so far proved unable to overcome these risks should provoke intense concern over the prospect that other, less proficient firms will soon be operating in these perilous waters.
The risk of conflict over the ownership of contested territories is likely to grow. Five of the Arctic states have asserted exclusive drilling rights to boundary areas also claimed by one of the others, and control over the polar region itself remains contentious. In an area with the "potential for tapping what may be as much as a quarter of the planet's undiscovered oil and gas," Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel warned recently, "a flood of interest in energy exploration has the potential to heighten tensions over other issues."
So far, not one of these disputes has provoked a military response, and the Arctic states have pledged to refrain from such action. However, most of the Arctic states have also asserted their right to defend their offshore territories with force and have taken steps to enhance their ability to fight in these areas. Russia, for example, recently announced plans to establish what it calls a "cutting-edge military infrastructure" in the Arctic.
None of this, however, is likely to deter other interested countries. With the demand for oil at an all-time high and existing fields incapable of satisfying global needs, the major energy firms are bound to pursue every conceivable source of supply. It is essential, then, that tough constraints be placed on Arctic drilling operations and that steps be taken to reduce tensions in the area. Some progress has been made by the Arctic Council, a consultative forum of Arctic nations. But much remains unresolved.
One way to impose formal restraints would be to devise and adopt an Arctic Treaty modeled on the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. Like that earlier measure, an Arctic compact would delineate the region's maritime boundaries and establish limits on military activities. It could also impose environmental protections and provide for the safe passage of civilian vessels through Arctic waters. In the end, no extra measure of oil and natural gas is worth the destruction of pristine wilderness or the onset of an Arctic arms race.
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