"Rusting Rivers" in Arctic An Ominous Sign Of Climate Change

Rusty water in a waterway in the Arctic. The permafrost
is melting, which releases metals that were once frozen
into place, onto the surface. 

High up in the Arctic, rivers and streams are turning red-orange, as if billions of nails were rusting away and flowing into what should be pristine brooks way up there. 

As NPR reports, these rusty rivers are now widely documented in the Brooks Range in northern Alaska. 

"Hundreds of Arctic rivers and streams are turning bright red-orange, not from chemical pollution, but from naturally occurring iron spilling from long-frozen ground as temperatures warm. 

The "rusting rivers" phenomenon, which has been documented across the Brooks Range in northern Alaska, offer a vivid example of the effects of climate change in a region that is warming faster than the global average."

Other metals, like aluminum and copper are also being release from the thawing permafrost, NPR says. Those metals can do a number on fish and other animals in the food chain. People are also wondering if the metals might contaminate rural drinking supplies, but so far, there's been no evidence of that. 

This information comes from an annual  "Arctic Report Card" that was recently released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They've been doing this for 20 years because the Arctic is the fastest warming place on Earth. And what goes on in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. 

This annual report is threatened because - big eye roll - the Trump administration does not want any government reports to even hint at climate change. He's terribly allergic to the term, constantly referring to idea of a warming world as a "hoax"

Scientist hope to keep the report card going, maybe by working around the United States.  

As NPR reports:

"An independent network of global scientists writes and compiles the research in the annual report, offering it some shelter from political winds. Some sections of this year's edition openly discuss the effects of climate change, and at least one study notes its major cause - burning fossil fuels."

Let's hope Trump doesn't find out about that line.

It's depressing to realize that basic scientific facts are now much like Soviet-era samizdat, publications that take great risks at offending the Fascist In Chief. We can't be sure if there will be another valuable Arctic Report Card next year 

Other information in the 2025 Arctic Report Card:

-- The Greenland Ice Sheet lost 129 billion tons of ice in 2025, continuing its long term trend. 

-- Alaskan glaciers have lost an average of 125 vertical feet since the 1950s. 

-- Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level on record this fall and early winter. 

-- The period from October 2024 to September, 2025 was the Arctic's warmest and wettest on record. 

-- Because of the increased precipitation in the Arctic, snow cover was above average during the heart of winter.  But the snow cover was well below normal by June, because of the unusual Arctic warmth. 

-- The relative lack of ice and snow allows the sun to heat the ground and water in the Arctic more than it would otherwise. That makes existing left over snow and ice melt even faster. It's called a feedback loop.    

As I've said before, what goes on in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. As much as climate change is messing up the top of the world, its effects will bleed down to the mid-latitudes through higher sea levels on the coasts, and bigger, more destructive storms. 

Don't Say "Climate": Trump Administration Scrubbing Climate Information From Federal Websites,

Don't say climate change!  Trump administration scrubs
mention of it from everywhere, because if you don't 
see the words then it doesn't exist, apparently. 

 If you don't say "climate change" then it doesn't exist.  

That, apparently is the logic of our lovely Trump administration as federal websites across the board remove pretty much all references to climate change over the course of his first month in office. 

Trump's first term played fast and loose with lots of information including items related to climate change. 

But this time, it's a full throttled Orwellian vision in which "facts" are whatever the Trump administration wants them to be. Reality is besides the point.  

This post isn't even talking yet about anticipated firings at NOAA and NWS that will hobble the nation's weather forecasting and warning system. That' update is coming in a future post arriving pretty soon. I'm just talking in this post about the Trump administration's thought that if you don't ever think about climate change, then it will never be a problem. 

Or something like that. 

Among the harmful firings at the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA are staffers that worked on climate change related issues. Since climate change affects the severity, location and types of disasters the U.S. faces, you'd think you'd need these staffers,

You know, to anticipate where and how disasters might strike so the agency can more readily help victims of these calamities. 

But I guess not 

The sprawling federal Agriculture Department has been ordered to scrub references to climate change as well, as Politico reports. 

The directive "could affect information across dozens of programs including climate-smart agriculture initiatives, USDA climate has, and Forest Service information regarding wildfires the frequency and severity of which scientists have linked to hotter, drier conditions fueled by climate change."

For now, some climate related material is still available from the Agriculture Department. USDA Climate Hubs, for example, was still up as of Wednesday (FEB5

NASA's Global Climate Change website is about to transition away, it it hasn't already.    It's been a handy source of climate information, including a dashboard on the home page that gives you the current amount of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere and their trends, global temperature and its trend and what direction Arctic sea ice is headed. Spoiler: Down.

There's now suddenly a disclaimer on the NASA Global Climate Change website that says "NASA's Global Climate Change website is going to look a little different in the coming months because we're headed to a new home, a more integrated portal on science.nasa.gov. Keep your eyes on our new space as we transition."

Yeah, love the attempt at the PR language (eye roll).  I'm not going to make a definitive conclusion on what the Trump administration is going to do with this site, but I bet it's not good. 

Climate information is disappearing from a lot of federal government websites, not just NASA. As Inside Climate News reports:

"The Trump administration is also removing climate information and documents from the U.S. State Department website, which (several days ago) had a climate section filled with documents related to U.S. climate policies aimed at meting the terms of the 2014 Paris climate pact, as well as materials outlining reaching plans to cut emissions of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, including methane.

But searching the current State Department website for the term 'global warming' just now leads to a long list of non-functioning links, with the Biden-era climate materials relegated to archives that have to be searched for separately."

 Even experienced scientists are now beginning to have trouble finding climate info on government websites. As Inside Climate News reports:

"Some of the changes may already be making it harder for U.S. climate scientists to collaborate internationally. 

David Ho, a University of Hawaii at Manoa climate researcher, said last week he found an error message when he tried to look for reports related to his work on ocean carbon cycles on the White House Office of Science and Technology website."

There are efforts to preserve web material that already exists before it is completely scrubbed. There's End of Term Web Archive, which is a collaboration of nonprofit groups, universities and two federal agencies to preserve scientific data. 

Other organizations have been combing government websites, preserving science data before it can be scrubbed by the Trump administration. 

I worry it's a matter of time that we won't be able to see basic climate data like the monthly reports NOAA"s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) regularly releases.

Or even just the huge waves of routine daily data all the National Weather Service offices release. After all, some rogue scientist could use and compile that data to find temperature trends (which is part of what the NCEI does now.

Guy Walton, the dude from Guy on Climate agrees, as this lack of information hurts everyone, from citizen scientists like me to experts like Walton. 

"....if the NCEI surface temperature records site gets taken down, I can't do my research. Only a few months ago, ,I was thinking that after the election of Kamala Harris, the NCEI record site might be improved with some of my input. Now I will feel fortunate if it and other tools for research used by many other scientists are not touched. We will see." 

Any truthful information is suspect in the Trump administration. You probably don't even have to use "banned"words or phrases like climate change or global warming. 

Merely mentioning a record hot day, month or season might well get you in trouble 

Even collaboration of any kind is out. As CBC reported, any cooperation between Canadian scientists or Environment Canada and NOAA are pretty much verboten. 

NOAA scientists now just submit for review if any discussions with Canadians include climate, energy, offshore wind, ocean mapping and exploration, competitive seafood, aquaculture, ocean plastics, the World Meteorological Organization, Arctic security and Arctic energy, notes CBC. 

A side effect of all this would be a brain drain from the United States to Canada and European countries, perhaps Asia too.

Most scientists want to seek the truth of the world around them. If that becomes impossible to do in the United States, then do it elsewhere, right?

The Trump administration's scrubbing away of any references to climate change won't just hurt Americans subject to the direct disasters and dangers created by global warming. Our economy, our innovation, our safety, our own wallets are all at risk. 

All because the merry band of oligarchs want to make a few more trillion dollars.