Arctic Report Card considers traditional knowledge in a changing Arctic

By Diana Haecker
A scientific document known as the Arctic Report Card, published for the past 16 years by the federal National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, this year included chapters on climate change-driven repercussions on food security of Arctic peoples as well as a chapter on foreign marine debris written by regional residents from Nome, Unalakleet, Savoonga and Gambell.
The rollout of the 2021 Arctic Report Card happened during the American Geophysical Union conference, the largest gathering of earth and space scientists, on Tuesday in New Orleans. Alaska and this region figured prominently in the publication of the report, as co-editor of the 146-page document is Rick Thoman of the Alaska Center of Climate Assessment and Policy at University of Alaska Fairbanks. Also, the three cover pictures of the report show a beaver dam at Grand Central, a subsistence fish rack at Unalakleet and the ice-free coast line of Unalakleet in the winter.
 A NOAA press release said that the 2021 Arctic Report Card documents the numerous ways that climate change continues to fundamentally alter this once reliably frozen region, as increasing heat and the loss of ice drive its transformation into a warmer, less frozen and more uncertain future.
“This year’s Arctic Report Card continues to show how the impacts of human-caused climate change are propelling the Arctic region into a dramatically different state than it was in just a few decades ago,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “The trends are alarming and undeniable. We face a decisive moment. We must take action to confront the climate crisis.”
The trends continue to show warming temperatures, loss of sea ice, increasing ocean acidification, extreme melting episodes of the Greenland ice sheet, increased tundra greening and beavers colonizing the Arctic tundra. But these things are not happening uniformly across the Arctic.
“Extreme events and amplified local processes indicate an Arctic of increasing regional and temporal variability,” says the report. While some areas show high tundra greening, other areas create more browning. Some areas saw high ocean productivity, other areas saw long swaths of low chlorophyll concentrations and thus low productivity from Greenland to the Barents Sea. The report card takes stock of the “vital signs” measured in sea ice, snow, air temperature and tundra greenness; it checks indicators such as river discharges, ocean acidification and observations on beaver expansion. It also includes emerging topics that make the connection between changes in the ecosystem and its impacts on humans living in the Arctic.
Scientists sound the alarm as they documents several first-evers: The first ever recorded rainfall in an area on Greenland summit last August; the first ever mid-winter voyages of Russian LNG tankers through the Bering Strait; the lowest ever sea ice volume in April since records began in 2010. In addition, retreating glaciers and thawing permafrost jeopardize homes, coastal settlements and infrastructure.
Decreasing sea ice, the loss of multi-year ice and thus the increase in human activity in formerly iced-in seas give rise to new problems such as noise pollution from ship traffic and trash washing ashore on formerly pristine beaches in the Bering Strait. A chapter in the report card details the marine debris that began washing up in the Bering Strait region in 2020, mostly associated with foreign ship traffic and increased fishing efforts on the Russian side of the Bering Strait, even north of the strait in the western Chukchi Sea.
The report card recognizes the impact of the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic on the people of the Arctic. Kaare Sikuaq Erickson, formerly of Unalakleet, presented on a chapter in the report card that dealt with Indigenous food access during COVID-19. He painted the picture for those who have not been in the Arctic and described the remoteness, the limited access to health care, lack of modern water and sewer systems in some parts and also crammed housing situations that make Native populations in rural Alaska susceptible to pandemics. He spoke of old site Unalakleet, where he and other kids were not allowed to go for fear that the virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic was still virulent there. He described the reality of store-bought food and the Native food of the land. When the local airline Ravn folded, it had impacts on imported food and the shelves in stores remained empty, he said. “That reminded us to get food of the land,” he said. “We learned about responsive solutions, most of which fell back on our traditional values, he said. “Sharing is at the core of who we are and this fosters long-term survival for our communities in extreme environs with limited resources.” As an example he showed a photo of an Inupiaq salad consisting of beluga muktuk from St. Michael, oogruk meat from Shishmaref, seal blubber from Shishmaref, smoked salmon, salmon eggs, dried chum, herring eggs and cabbage and carrots. That dish represents the region’s sharing, the interregional trade and the resilience of people helping each other out.
Despite the gloomy outlook on the dire environmental situation brought on by the climate crisis, Erickson said to be resourceful,  to seek solutions based on good science and the human capacity to share. “We have kids and we need to provide them with a hopeful and positive future,” he said. “It can be draining sometime, but we have to uplift each other.” When a reporter asked about the particular doom and gloom Erickson is facing, he answered, “That depends on the region, but in my region, the sea ice loss is changing everything, It is an ecosystem collapse situation and our biggest concern.”
While the Arctic Report Card in its former iterations focused mostly on climate data and environmental change, this year the human element was recognized.
“The scientific and observational story of the Arctic is a human story – of climate change, of increased shipping and industrial activity and of communities responding to local and regional disruptions,” the report says. While Bering Strait and Norton Sound residents are only too familiar with the changes and the impacts to subsistence hunting and fishing, the scientists faced questions from mainstream media outlets who asked how the “doom and gloom” of the Arctic Report Card and the urgent need to act should be communicated to people populating the temperate regions. Rick Thoman said that it’s important to continue to document the changes. “But as the Arctic Report Card has evolved, we’re including the impacts to people. And I think that’s really the connection that people at lower latitudes can make that these changes are not abstract. It’s not just about polar bears. It’s about actual human beings, members of the world community that are being impacted,” he said.
“Arctic communities are resilient. They’ve been through a lot over the last 10,000 years and they’ll continue to be, but the changes are impacting people and their lives and livelihoods from ‘What’s for dinner tonight’ on up to the international scale,” he said. “So I think really, if we can stress anything, it’s not just that it’s warming by x degrees, but the impacts to actual people I think is, is the connection to make so that people at lower latitudes fully understand what this means to people just like them.”
While the warming trends are not new and scientists have sounded the alarm to curb greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent tipping points of climate disasters, policy makers are still not unified in taking decisive action.
Answering the Nugget’s question on whether the Arctic Report Card will actually result in changes, NOAA Administrator Dr. Richard Spinrad said, “The short answer to the question is: Yes, of course.”
He said it’s not just NOAA and other U.S. federal agencies, “but in the global dialogue about policy, the report card is playing an ever increasingly important role in terms of framing policy.” He said he is particularly encouraged because there is a resurgence of activity. There was meeting of the Arctic executive steering committee after many years, the Intergovernmental Arctic Research Policy Committee within the office of science and technology policy was reactivated. “I can assure you that as I go into these meetings, representing the interest and equities of the Department of Commerce, we take the report card as almost a Bible in terms of framing, the scientific issues that need to be attended to. I think the emphasis this time around on perspectives and incorporation of indigenous traditional ecological knowledge has been a critical and a long-needed component of that input into the scientific training for policies.”