Decades of cooperative research in the Arctic are at risk if political tensions between Europe and the United States worsen. For more than 30 years, scientists from across Arctic nations have pooled expertise in the physical, biological and social sciences to track rapid changes in one of the planet’s fastest-warming regions. Since the late 1970s the Arctic has lost roughly 33,000 square miles of sea ice each year — an area comparable to the size of Czechia.
Scientific collaboration in the region survived even through the Cold War. The Arctic Council, established in 1991, institutionalized that spirit of cooperation. But ties have been strained since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which effectively froze many long-standing exchanges. If relations between Europe and the US deteriorate further over trade or defense, the damage to shared Arctic science could deepen.
Greenland is central to both global climate systems and scientific inquiry. Around four-fifths of the island is covered by its ice sheet, a climate tipping point whose accelerated melting is driven by human carbon emissions. That melt exposes mineral resources that are increasingly attractive to resource-hungry economies. The complete loss of Greenland’s ice sheet would raise global sea level by about 7.4 meters, threatening millions in low-lying coastal regions. The ice itself is a vital archive: deep cores trap ancient air bubbles and deposits that allow researchers to reconstruct Earth’s atmospheric history.
International teams have long collaborated on studying environmental change, ice-sheet and glacier dynamics, and Arctic land and marine ecosystems. Greenland has produced major scientific discoveries, from the massive York meteorite to ancient rocks whose magnetic signatures helped push back estimates of the Earth’s magnetic history to 3.7 million years. Social and health research remains essential for understanding the cultures and well-being of Indigenous Arctic populations.
Maribeth Murray, a Canadian environmental archaeologist and director of the Arctic Institute of North America, emphasizes the global stakes. “It’s such a cliche, but what happens to the Arctic has a global impact,” she said, adding that scientists are increasingly uneasy about the region’s political climate. “We’re feeling pretty uncomfortable,” Murray said.
Geopolitical ruptures have already damaged Arctic science. Russia’s war in Ukraine severed long-standing links and disrupted cooperative programs, notably INTERACT. INTERACT was designed as an Arctic-wide network to share data, coordinate research and provide transnational access to dozens of field stations. EU funding once enabled European teams to work in Russia, allowed Russian data to flow to European research centers, and supported exchanges with US and Canadian scientists. Those arrangements largely ended in early 2022.
Margareta Johansson, a cryosphere scientist and former INTERACT coordinator, said the loss of access to Russian stations in February 2022 had major consequences. The pause of 21 Russian stations from collaborative networks, she and co-authors argue, was driven by a mixture of national and institutional policies and by personal moral decisions, which together resulted in the effective exclusion of Russian science from INTERACT and the closing of science-diplomacy channels. “If you remove all of the Russian stations, we basically don’t really know what’s going on in the Arctic,” Johansson said.
Researchers say programs like INTERACT are examples of science diplomacy: using scientific cooperation to build international ties and, conversely, using diplomatic engagement to support research. Paul Berkman, a practitioner of science diplomacy affiliated with Harvard, argues that scientific partnerships can create shared interests that ease hostilities and open pathways to address urgent problems from conflict to climate change. “The Arctic is a double-edged sword,” Berkman said. “It is a region, potentially, of global conflict. It’s also potentially a source of global peace. The convergence that exists in the Arctic — China, Russia, the United States, Europe, and increasingly other states — is an opportunity to facilitate dialogue.”
Scientists warn that without renewed channels for cooperation, the world’s ability to monitor critical Arctic processes, anticipate hazards and develop shared responses will be weakened. Rebuilding trusted scientific and diplomatic links will be essential to maintain effective observation networks, share data, and ensure that research continues to inform global policy on climate, ecosystems and the rights and health of Arctic communities.