This is the 33rd issuance of the annual assessment now known as State of the Climate, published in the Bulletin since 1996. As a supplement to the Bulletin, its foremost function is to document the status and trajectory of many components of the climate system.

Arctic Council countries have a critical role in reducing air pollution as, due to their proximity to the Arctic region, improving air quality serves the double purpose to preserve the Arctic climate and improve health and welfare in the region.

Reviewed and supported by over 60 leading cryosphere scientists, the Report details how a combination of melting polar ice sheets, vanishing glaciers, and thawing permafrost will have rapid, irreversible, and disastrous effects on the Earth’s population.

An international, peer-reviewed publication released each summer, the State of the Climate is the authoritative annual summary of the global climate published as a supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Arctic wetlands play a number of crucial environmental roles, but they continue to be degraded and lost, with potentially dire global consequences. This report offers insights and identifies knowledge gaps, with the aim of supporting sustainable development and resilience in these areas.

A drastic drop in caribou and shorebird populations is a mirrored image of the dire modifications unfolding on the Arctic tundra, based on a new report from the Arctic Council. The terrestrial Arctic spans roughly 2.7m sq miles (7m sq km), marked by excessive chilly, drought, sturdy winds and seasonal darkness.

New observations show that the increase in Arctic average surface temperature between 1979 and 2019 was three times higher than the global average during this period – higher than previously reported - according to the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP).

A new World Meteorological Organization bulletin on Aerosols examines the impact of biomass burning (wildfires and open burning for agriculture) on climate and air quality. It covers the episodes of the 2019/2020 Australian bushfires, the 2015 Indonesia peatfires and smoke transport from boreal forest fires to the Arctic.

The Arctic Report Card is an annual compilation of original, peer-reviewed environmental observations and analyses of a region undergoing rapid and dramatic alterations to weather, climate, oceanic, and land conditions.