Federal officials on Friday said that Arctic region has changed dramatically for the worse in the past five years. A new report card from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rates the polar region with alarming reviews, but also says that the Arctic is not doomed and it still will freeze in the winter, said report co-editor Jackie Richter-Menge. The Arctic acts as Earth's refrigerator, cooling the planet, and scientists say that it is melting at near record pace and is absorbing too much of the sun's heat. "It's not cooling as well as it used to," Richter-Menge said. The dramatic changes are from both man-made global warming and recent localized weather shifts, which were on top of the longer term warming trend, scientists said. The report, written by 121 scientists from around the world, said statistics point to a shift in the Arctic health in 2006. That was right before 2007, when a mix of weather conditions and changing climate led to a record loss of sea ice, from which the region has never recovered. This summer's sea ice melt was the second worst on record, slightly behind 2007.