"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. 

Arctic Now Becoming Emitter Of Carbon Dioxide, That Dreaded Greenhouse Gas

In this photo from U.S. Bureau of Land Management,
permafrost, which has been increasingly thawing in
the Arctic, erodes into the Beaufort Sea.

Once upon a time, the Arctic used to be the place where carbon dioxide went to die.  

At least it seemed that way. It would get stored in the permafrost, seemingly locked in that icy prison never to bother us in the atmosphere again. never to bother us in the atmosphere again. 

Back in the day, that didn't matter much anyway.  There wasn't so much carbon dioxide in the air, so no real climate change. At least that's the way it was a century or more ago.

Now, just when we don't need more greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the Arctic is starting to belch it out, according to new information from NOAA. 

 The world has warmed up enough through climate change to alter the ecosystems of the Arctic, and that is prompting that stored carbon in the permafrost to come out of hiding to join the world's hot and getting hotter party. 

The news comes the 2024 Arctic Report Card, researched and written by 97 scientists from 11 countries.

NOAA says

"After storing carbon dioxide in frozen soil for millennia, the Arctic tundra is being transformed by frequent wildfires into an overall source of carbon to the atmosphere, which is already absorbing record levels of heat-trapping fossil fuel pollution."

Wildfires in the areas of North America with permafrost have increased in the past couple decades. The report says that since 2003, emissions from polar wildfires averaged 207 million tons of carbon each year. That's more than the annual carbon emissions from nations like Argentina and Austria. 

Arctic wildfires are only a relatively small piece of the problem.  The permafrost is melting more and more, releasing carbon into the air instead of storing it. That's why, for the first time, the Arctic is making the climate change problem worse, not better.

I found a good explanation of this at NPR:

"Twila Moon, lead editor of the Arctic Report Card and  scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, likened permafrost to chicken in the freezer: As long as it stays frozen, microbes stay away.

'Once you have that chicken out of your freezer, it's thawing and all those microbes are getting to work, breaking down the chicken, making it rot,' she said. 'The permafrost is really doing the same thing.'"

There was the tiniest glimmer of good news from Greenland, but it was definitely nothing to get the Champagne and confetti out to party. 

The Greenland Ice sheet mass loss was the lowest since 2013, mostly because it snowed more than usual up there. Still, the ice shoot lost somewhere in the broad range of 22 and 77 billion tons of ice last year. 

That was enough to raise the global sea levels by 0.15 millimeters. Which is too small for anybody to notice. But if you add in all the other sources of sea level rise, and compound them year after year, it starts to make a big difference. 

This report demonstrates that the Arctic has changed much in just a few decades. There's no way it's going to stay as it is  now, either. It's going to get worse.

The Arctic is the fastest warming region of the world.  There's no signs, and no reasons for that warming to slow down as fossil fuel emissions keep cranking.  Since the Arctic is also adding those emissions, if anything, the pace at which the Arctic deteriorates will also increase.