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Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme - AMAP, AMAP Secretariat, Hjalmar Johansens Gate 14, Tromsø (2026)

25/08/2026

"The High Arctic is having its coldest summer since records began in 1958, and the cold is holding through August. So much for Arctic warming."

❌ A myth spreading across the internet by climate skeptics websites, it is time we burst it.

This is the latest in our short summer series, in which the AMAP working group takes one widely held Arctic myth and tests it against the evidence, highlighting the work of our own experts, the wider research community, and Arctic Indigenous Knowledge Holders.

Start with the graph. It is Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut's daily average air temperature north of 80 degrees north, a cap covering under one per cent of the planet, nearly all ocean. Because its grid crowds towards the pole, DMI's instructions say "do NOT use this measure as an actual physical mean temperature of the arctic", while noting the graphs "can be used for comparing one year to an other". Comparing years is fair. Calling the answer the Arctic is not.

Now the numbers. The daily values are open files back to 1958, so we downloaded them all and repeated the audit. It holds. June was the coldest June in the series, July the coldest July by half a degree, and the summer the coldest since the record began. The cold is not holding, though. The record run stopped in the second week of August.

Here is where the argument slips. One cool season is weather. Climate is the average of many, which is why a climate normal is a thirty year average (World Meteorological Organization). A remarkable summer cannot overturn a trend measured over four decades, any more than a cold May morning cancels spring.

The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the rest of the world (AMAP, Arctic Climate Change Update 2024; Rantanen et al., 2022). It is felt most in the cold season, the greatest trends from October through May (AMAP, 2024).

Summer above the sea ice is the one place it cannot show. Melting absorbs enormous energy. Drop ice into a glass of water and the water stays at zero until the last piece is gone, however warm the room. The Arctic Ocean does this on a vast scale. While the ice melts, the sun's heat goes into turning it into water instead of warming the air above, so the air sits close to zero whatever else is happening (Mark Serreze et al., The Cryosphere, 2026).

Now the rest of the Arctic in the same weeks. June 2026 was the warmest Arctic June on record and July the third warmest (Rick Thoman, Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, 2026). July sea ice averaged 8.29 million square kilometres, joint fifth lowest ever measured (Met Office, 2026).

The Arctic is watched daily by DMI, Copernicus European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts - ECMWF, Norwegian Meteorological Institute | Meteorologisk institutt, NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) all published openly.

Cold air above melting ice is not the absence of Arctic warming.

20/08/2026

"Removing the sulphur from ships' exhaust in 2020 is what caused the warming we are seeing, not CO2."

❌ A myth built on a real effect that scientists found and published themselves, which is exactly why it deserves a careful answer.

This is the latest in our short summer series, in which the AMAP working group takes one widely held Arctic myth and tests it against the evidence, highlighting the work of our own experts, the wider research community, and Arctic Indigenous Knowledge Holders.

Ship fuel was for decades the tar-like residue from the bottom of the refinery barrel, legally allowed to carry 3.5 per cent sulphur. Burning it made sulphate particles, and sulphate particles are bright. They scatter sunlight and seed whiter, longer-lasting clouds over a dark ocean. Shipping was running an accidental geoengineering programme.

On 1 January 2020 the limit fell to 0.5 per cent worldwide. Sulphur dioxide from ships dropped by roughly 80 per cent (Yoshioka et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2024) and satellites watched ship tracks fade from the clouds (Watson-Parris et al., PNAS, 2022). The cooling switched off, and we have said as much ourselves: falling sulphur will add around 0.8 degrees to Arctic warming by 2050 (von Salzen et al., Communications Earth and Environment, 2022).

Now the size of it. Estimates cluster near 0.1 watts per square metre, about 0.03 to 0.05 degrees, or two to three years of greenhouse warming brought forward (Jordan and Henry, Earth's Future, 2024). In the record heat of 2023, El Niño was twice as large a factor (Farago et al., Earth System Dynamics, 2026).

That is where the argument slips. Cleaning the air did not create warming. It uncovered warming CO2 had already caused. Sulphate was a painkiller, and a painkiller wears off. CO2 keeps accumulating for centuries.

Then there is the half of this story that rarely gets told.

The 2020 rules covered sulphur. They said nothing about soot. Black carbon is the other half of ship exhaust, and it warms. It darkens snow and ice, and the Arctic is roughly five times more sensitive to it than the mid-latitudes (Sand et al., Journal of Geophysical Research, 2013). Some sulphur-compliant fuels emit over three times the black carbon of clean distillate, carrying 3.6 times the warming effect over snow (Kokkola et al., Climate and Atmospheric Science, 2026). Black carbon from Arctic shipping nearly doubled between 2015 and 2021 (ICCT, 2025).

Arctic ship traffic and its emissions are tracked openly by Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment, the IMO, The International Council on Clean Transportation and Clean Arctic Alliance.

Taking the sulphur out cost us cooling we never asked for. It also saved lives. The soot is still there, and cutting it could avoid around 0.3 degrees of Arctic warming by 2050 (von Salzen et al., 2022). That is the fastest lever the Arctic has, and we are barely pulling it.

Which Arctic myth would you like us to examine next?

17/08/2026

👇👇👇
https://www.facebook.com/share/1HBkKJKX8c/

10/08/2026

"Air pollution is yesterday's problem."

❌ A myth that stands on a real success and draws exactly the wrong lesson from it, and it is time we burst it.

This is the latest in our short summer series, in which the AMAP working group takes one widely held Arctic myth and tests it against the evidence, highlighting the work of our own experts, the wider research community, and Arctic Indigenous Knowledge Holders.

In the EU, deaths linked to it fell 57 per cent between 2005 and 2023 (European Environment Agency, 2025). In Alert Canada, haze season sulphate dropped by around two thirds between 1981 and 2003 (Quinn et al., Tellus B, 2007). Regulation worked.

So what about the rest of the Arctic?
Black carbon fell between 1990 and 2010, then that decline stagnated (AMAP, 2021). And roughly a quarter of the long term drop in light absorbing aerosol measured at the Zeppelin Observatory on Svalbard since 2002 is not cleaner air at all. It is a warming Arctic raining more of it out (Heslin-Rees et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2024).

Globally, 99 per cent of people breathe air above the World Health Organization guideline (World Health Organization, 2024, for 2019), and air pollution took 7.9 million lives in 2023 (State of Global Air, 2025). There is no safe level either. Across 60 million Americans and 325,000 Europeans, the link to mortality grew stronger below the legal limits, not weaker (Di et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2017; Strak et al., BMJ, 2021).

The Arctic inherits what the industrial world emits, and here the same particle does more. Gas flaring is under 3 per cent of global soot, yet supplies 42 per cent of the soot in Arctic surface air (Stohl et al., ACP, 2013). Watt for watt, soot darkening snow warms more than three times as effectively as CO2 (Flanner et al., JGR, 2007). And smoke from fires in Arctic states is linked to some 21,000 deaths a year, around 8,000 of them beyond the Arctic states altogether (Silver et al., Communications Earth and Environment, 2024).

We know all of this because people measure it: the Zeppelin Observatory on Svalbard, owned by Norsk Polarinstitutt • Norwegian Polar Institute and scientifically coordinated by NILU with Stockholm University; Villum Research Station in north Greenland, run by Aarhus University; Environment and Climate Change Canada at Alert; NOAA at Utqiagvik; Finnish Meteorological Institute - Ilmatieteen laitos at Pallas; and Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research flying above them, tied together through IASOA and World Meteorological Organization Global Atmosphere Watch.

Air pollution is not yesterday's problem. It is yesterday's problem we began to fix and never finished, and the Arctic is where the unfinished part shows.

Which Arctic myth would you like us to examine next?

30/07/2026

"Global burnt area is shrinking, so wildfires are nothing to worry about. And the Arctic has always burned anyway."

❌ A myth that pairs one true fact with one false comfort, and it is time we burst it.

This is the latest in our short summer series, where the AMAP working group takes one widely held Arctic myth and tests it against the evidence, alongside the wider research community and Arctic Indigenous Knowledge Holders.

Global burnt area really has been shrinking, by about a quarter since the late 1990s (Andela et al., Science, 2017). Why? Because of land use. As farming, roads and livestock spread into the grasslands and savannas of Africa, Asia and South America, the frequent grass fires there are broken up and put out, and those savannas dominate the global total. Take them out of the sum and the picture flips: in the world's forests, fire emissions have been climbing (Zheng et al., Science Advances, 2021).

Nowhere is that clearer than the far north.
Four decades of satellites show that fire above the Arctic Circle was once rare. Then came 2019 and 2020, which between them accounted for 44 per cent of all the area burned in the Siberian Arctic since 1982 (Descals et al., Science, 2022).

And the trend is speeding up. Across recent decades the North American Arctic has burned, on average, about twice the area it did in the mid-20th century (Woodwell Climate Research Center, quoted by NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2026), and the worst years for fire emissions across the high north are all recent: 2021 was the worst on record, 2023 the second (Copernicus ECMWF, European State of the Climate 2024). In 2025 Canada endured its second worst fire year on record, behind only 2023 (CAMS, 2025).

And 2026? Globally, the first half was the quietest on record, yet fires in Canada and Siberia are already climbing, and here the Arctic fire season is only just beginning (CAMS, 2026).

Why the north burns differently. Hotter, longer, drier summers dry the fuel, more lightning ignites it (Veraverbeke et al., Nature Climate Change, 2017), and the ground itself will burn: carbon-rich peat and thawing permafrost. Some fires no longer even stop for winter. "Zombie" fires smoulder down in that peat under the snow and flare back to life the following spring (Scholten et al., Nature, 2021).

These fires then heat the climate further, burning into legacy carbon that boreal soils had kept locked away for decades to centuries (Walker et al., Nature, 2019), and dusting snow and ice with soot that makes them melt faster (AMAP, 2021). The smoke harms health far downwind, and it threatens homes, reindeer pastures and hunting grounds. Indigenous fire stewardship is part of the answer, and the only lasting way to fewer Arctic fires is to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Which Arctic myth would you like us to examine next?

28/07/2026

"Greenland was green and farmed by the Vikings, so today's melting is nothing new."

❌ It is one of the most persistent myths about the Arctic, and it is time we burst it.
This is the third in our short summer series, in which the AMAP working group takes one widely held Arctic myth and tests it against the evidence, highlighting the work of our own experts, the wider research community, and Arctic Indigenous Knowledge Holders.

The story rests on something real. Between roughly 950 and 1250, a natural fluctuation known as the Medieval Warm Period warmed parts of the North Atlantic, including southern Greenland (IPCC AR6, 2021). It was driven by relatively high solar activity, a quiet spell for large volcanoes, and shifts in ocean circulation. It was also regional: not globally synchronous, and no warmer, worldwide, than today (PAGES 2k Consortium, Nature, 2019).

Around 985, in that warmer window, the Norse settled the ice-free fjords of the south. Their Eastern Settlement lay near modern Qaqortoq, their Western Settlement near modern Nuuk, and they raised sheep, goats and cattle there for some four centuries (Dugmore et al., PNAS, 2012).

According to the medieval Icelandic sources (Íslendingabók and the Saga of Erik the Red), Erik the Red named the land "Greenland" to make it sound inviting to settlers. The name captured a green coastal fringe, not a lush, ice-free island. Even then, the great majority of the island stayed under ice, the ice sheet itself never disappeared. It has existed for more than two million years (Knutz et al., Nature Geoscience, 2019), and the deep ice cores record continuous ice straight through the medieval period.

Today is different in kind.
The Greenland ice sheet is now losing roughly 264 billion tonnes of ice a year (NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2002 to 2025), and its surface melting is the most intense in at least 350 years, still accelerating (Trusel et al., Nature, 2018). This time it is the ice sheet itself that is going, and the warming behind it is global, not regional.

We know this because Greenland is watched closely: through the deep ice cores drilled by international teams, the PROMICE network and GEUS, Asiaq Greenland Survey, NSIDC, ESA - European Space Agency, and the Grønlands Naturinstitut.

As for the Norse, why they faded in the 1400s is still debated and looks like several pressures at once. Sediments beside one of their farms show the climate there grew steadily drier starving the hay their livestock needed (Zhao et al., Science Advances, 2022). Their walrus-ivory trade also collapsed (Star et al., Proc. R. Soc. B, 2018), the North Atlantic was cooling into the Little Ice Age (Dugmore et al., PNAS, 2012).

Today, southern Greenland is being farmed again. That is not the past returning; it is a sign that today's warming is real. And unlike the Norse, we can see it coming.

Which Arctic myth would you like us to examine next?

📸 Paolo Verzone

23/07/2026

"Arctic sea ice is growing back."
❌ It is one of the most persistent myths about the Arctic, and it is time we burst it.

This is the second in our short summer series, in which the AMAP working group takes one widely held Arctic myth and tests it against the evidence, highlighting the work of our own experts, the wider research community and the Indigenous knowledge holders who live with these changes.

🧊 The confusion is understandable, because the ice does grow back, every year. It expands through the cold months to a peak in March, then melts to a low in September (National Snow and Ice Data Center). That seasonal rhythm is natural. What is not natural is that both ends of the cycle keep shrinking.

📉 The September minimum is now declining by about 12 per cent per decade, and in 2025 it fell to 4.60 million square kilometres. The 10th-lowest extent in the 47-year satellite record (NOAA Satellite and Information Service Arctic Report Card 2025). The remaining ice is also younger and thinner: the old, thick ice that had survived four summers or more has declined by around 95 per cent since the mid-1980s (NOAA).

⚠️ This past winter, even the maximum reached its smallest size in the satellite record (NSIDC, 2025). On present trends, the Arctic is likely to see its first practically ice-free September before 2050 under every emissions scenario (IPCC, 2021), with some studies pointing to the 2030s (Kim et al., Nature Communications, 2023).

🛰️ The Arctic is one of the most closely watched places on Earth. Satellites have tracked the ice daily since 1979, joined by laser and radar altimetry from NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the ESA - European Space Agency, and by teams who drift with the ice to measure it from within, from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research led MOSAiC expedition to France's new Fondation Tara Océan Climate Foundation Polar Station.

🛢️ The cause is not in doubt. The IPCC finds that the observed decline can only be reproduced when human greenhouse-gas emissions, chiefly from burning fossil fuels, are included (IPCC, 2021). The relationship is close to linear: around three square metres of September sea ice are lost for every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted (Dirk N. and Julienne Stroeve, Science, 2016).

🐻‍❄️ It matters far beyond the region. Sea ice underpins the Arctic food web, from the algae within it to the seals, whales and communities it sustains; for Arctic peoples it is a platform for travel and hunting and a shield for the coast; and globally, bright ice reflects sunlight that open water absorbs, so as it retreats the planet warms faster.

Cutting our emissions slows the ice loss directly. The future of Arctic sea ice remains, quite literally, in our hands.

Which Arctic myth would you like us to examine next?

📷 The amazing Zachary Labe

21/07/2026

"Polar bears are doing just fine."

❌ It is one of the most persistent myths about the Arctic, and it is time we burst it.

This is the first in a short summer series.
Each post takes one widely held myth about the Arctic and tests it against the current evidence, drawing on the work of our own experts, the wider scientific community, and the Indigenous knowledge holders who have observed these changes first-hand for generations.

For polar bears, reality is more nuanced than the myth allows.

🐻‍❄️ Some populations are, for now, holding on. In Svalbard, bears have maintained and in places improved their body condition even as sea ice has retreated, supported by an unusually rich local food web (Jon Aars et al., Scientific Reports, 2026). The researchers are careful to describe this as short-term flexibility rather than evidence that the species is secure.

📉 Across most of their range, however, the trend is sobering. In Western Hudson Bay, the population fell from roughly 950 bears in 2011 to around 620 in 2021, a decline of a third in a single decade, and close to half its 1980s size (Environment and Climate Change Canada aerial surveys). Those most affected are the individuals on which the population's future depends: young bears and females with cubs.

🦭 The mechanism is well understood. Polar bears hunt seals from the sea ice, and as that ice melts each summer they are forced ashore to fast. A 2024 study that tracked twenty bears on land found that nearly all lost around one kilogram per day, and that terrestrial foods such as berries, birds and carcasses could not offset the loss of seal prey (Pagano et al., Nature Communications, 2024). As the ice-free season lengthens, bears move closer to critical physiological limits (Peter M. et al., Nature Climate Change, 2020). The species remains classified as Vulnerable (IUCN).

Sea ice is not the only pressure. As apex predators, polar bears carry some of the highest pollutant burdens in the Arctic: persistent organic pollutants, mercury and PFAS, carried north on winds and currents and concentrated through the food chain (AMAP assessments).

Polar bears are monitored continuously and in partnership with Arctic Indigenous communities, whose knowledge is increasingly recognised as essential to how the species is studied and managed (Katharina Miller et al., Communications Earth & Environment, 2025).

➡️ So no, polar bears are not, as a species, doing just fine.

Polar bears are monitored by the IUCN, the Polar Bear Range States, the Arctic Council working groups Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna and AMAP, together with national agencies and Indigenous communities Inuit Circumpolar Council Alaska ICC Canada, ICC Greenland, Alaska Nannut Co-Management Council, The Nunavut Wildlife Management Board (NWMB), Inuvialuit Game Council, KNAPK, Norsk Polarinstitutt

Which Arctic myth would you like us to examine next?

📷 Susanne Miller, USFWS

20/06/2026

Today is hashtag day, and nowhere on Earth tells this climate story more starkly than the far North.

According to AMAP's latest Arctic Climate Change Update:
🌡️ The Arctic has warmed about three times faster than the global average since 1979.
🌊 The Arctic Ocean is acidifying faster than any other ocean, globally, the steepest declines in pH are projected right here.
🧊 Under current emissions trends, the first sea-ice-free Arctic summer is projected by mid-century.
🐚 Tiny sea snails (pteropods) at the base of the food web are already being affected, and polar cod eggs are vulnerable too.

Every stripe is one year in the Arctic, from 1902 to 2025. Each one shows how that year's temperature compared to the average of 1961–2010: blue years were cooler than that average, red years were warmer.

The future Arctic is still being written.

This is what science gives us, not opinions, but a clear-eyed view of what's happening and what we can still change. Read the evidence for yourself: AMAP's full assessments are free and open at https://www.amap.no/publications

05/06/2026

🌍 Happy !

This year's call, Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future.
This couldn't be more urgent in the Arctic. The region is warming more than three times faster than the global average, and what happens in the North shapes the climate, oceans and weather of the entire planet.

At AMAP, our experts track the pollutants and climate shifts reshaping the Arctic, turning monitoring into the evidence policymakers need to act.

📖 Read our latest publications on climate, plastics, and black carbon link in comments!

Monitoring the Arctic is acting for the climate ❄️

Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme - AMAP

25/08/2026

20/08/2026

17/08/2026

10/08/2026

30/07/2026

28/07/2026

23/07/2026

21/07/2026

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