Norway’s Meteorological Institute Fakes ‘The Science’™
Today I do have a gem for you—more evidence of fake scientism masquerading as ‘the Science’™
Allusions and comparisons to the Covid shenanigans are, of course, purely coincidental, as are the implications of observations that sea ice losses in the last ± 15 years are ‘statistically insignificant’, as a recent study discussed below highlights.
Translation of non-English content mine, with emphases and [snark] added.
Sea Ice Shrinks: ‘Uncertain whether the ecosystem can adapt’
By Anniken Sanna, Norwegian Meteorological Institute, 2 Oct. 2025 [source; archived]
The sea ice in the Arctic has reached its lowest point for the summer season and measurements show that the ice continues to shrink. The extent is not a new record-low, but the volume of ice is much less than before.
The melting season in the Arctic is over, and now scientists are certain that the lowest extent after the summer has been reached. This year’s minimum was the 14th lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1978
[this means that we don’t have data going back further in time; and then there’s the whole can-of-worms deriving from data splice by pretending that the sea ice record is made up of a consistent set of records—but that’s not true as the sea ice record is made up of data generated by different instruments on a series of changing satellites; see e.g. this piece, this piece, and this piece].
Although 2025 did not set a new record for the lowest sea ice extent, the statistics show a clear pattern. The sea ice in the Arctic is shrinking.
‘The 23 lowest sea ice extent measurements have occurred after 2001. This means that sea ice in modern times has consistently reached its lowest levels, which underlines the long-term reduction in ice extent’, says Signe Aaboe, climate scientist and sea ice expert at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.
Updated on 7 October: When we write in this article that sea ice is shrinking, we are referring to how much less sea ice extent has become since measurements began in 1978, as the map below shows:
[remember this paragraph, it’ll become important further on]
The map shows the extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2025. The orange line indicates the normal [sic] extent of sea ice in September in the period 1981-2010.
The Ice is Getting Thinner and Less Robust
It is not only the extent of the ice that is shrinking, but also its volume has been significantly reduced. The multi-year ice, which is much thicker and which previously covered a large part of the Arctic Ocean, is almost gone. Now it is the thin, one-year ice that dominates. It is more vulnerable to melting.
‘Even when the extent is not at record lows, the volume of ice is much smaller than before. This makes the ice far less robust and more vulnerable to climate change’, explains Aaboe.
The ice itself contains a large and complex system of life. Everything from viruses and fungi to algae, crustaceans and small jellyfish.
‘Some species that live in the ice are completely dependent on multi-year sea ice. If the single-year ice completely takes over, these species could risk extinction’, says Rolf Gradinger, professor and expert in ice biology at UiT.
[University of Tromsø]
Little Sea Ice Also in Antarctica
It is not only in the Arctic that sea ice is under pressure. In Antarctica, where it has been winter and the sea ice has grown, researchers have measured the maximum extent after the winter season. The measurements show that the winter ice extent is the third lowest ever recorded.
‘The development we see in both the north and the south is a clear signal. Sea ice is an important indicator of climate change and a central part of the livelihoods of many species’, says Aaboe.
A Vicious Cycle for the Climate
Sea ice also plays a crucial role in regulating the temperature of the Earth. It reflects sunlight and keeps the planet cool. When the ice melts, the dark ocean surface is exposed, which instead absorbs the sun’s heat.
‘This amplifies the warming of both the ocean and the atmosphere. We see that sea ice is disappearing faster, and this is accelerating global climate change’, says Aaboe.
What Does The Science Say About This?
So much for the press release of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute—but what does the peer-reviewed literature say about this?
Well, for starters, I’ll point you to a piece I penned two years ago:
Over the past 50 years, satellite observations have shown ice shelves collapse, thin, and retreat; however, there are few measurements of the Antarctic-wide change in ice shelf area…
Over the last decade, a reduction in the area on the Antarctic Peninsula (6693 km2) and West Antarctica (5563 km2) has been outweighed by area growth in East Antarctica (3532 km2) and the large Ross and Ronne–Filchner ice shelves (14 028 km2)…
Overall, the Antarctic ice shelf area has grown by 5305 km2 since 2009, with 18 ice shelves retreating and 16 larger shelves growing in area. Our observations show that Antarctic ice shelves gained 661 Gt of ice mass over the past decade…
Because I’ve got something else for you—consider the paper by M.R. England et al., ‘Minimal Arctic Sea Ice Loss in the Last 20 Years, Consistent With Internal Climate Variability’, Geophysical Research Letters, 52, 15 (2025), doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL116175.
Here’s from their abstract:
Over the past two decades, Arctic sea ice loss has slowed considerably, with no statistically significant decline in September sea ice area since 2005. This pause is robust across observational data sets, metrics, and seasons. Large-ensemble CMIP5 and CMIP6 simulations reveal that such periods with minimal sea ice decline under increasing greenhouse gas emissions are not unusual.
Analysis of ensemble members that simulate analogs of the observed pause indicates that the current slowdown could plausibly persist another five to 10 years, although the chances of a faster-than-average decline are increased in the near-future. The modeling evidence [sic] suggests that internal variability has substantially offset anthropogenically forced sea ice loss in recent decades.
Overall, this observed pause in Arctic sea ice decline is consistent with simulated internal variability superimposed on the long-term trend according to the bulk of the climate modeling evidence.
Plain Language Summary
Over the last 20 years, the decline of Arctic sea ice has slowed down substantially. Climate models (from CMIP5 and CMIP6) show that pauses in sea ice loss across multiple decades can happen, even as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. When we compare the current slowdown to similar pauses in model simulations, we see that it could plausibly continue for another five to 10 years, although the same slowdown makes a faster-than-average sea ice decline more likely in the coming years.
Most of the evidence from these climate models suggests that natural climate variations have played a large part in slowing the human-driven loss of sea ice. However, it is not entirely certain whether changes in the human influence on climate (the “forced response”) have also contributed.
Overall, while it may sound surprising that Arctic sea ice loss has slowed down even as global temperatures hit record highs, the climate modeling evidence suggests we should expect periods like this to occur somewhat frequently.
So, there you have it. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Care for some more academic prose from the results? Well, here goes:
While sea ice loss in September is of particular interest because that month is the annual minimum, the current pause in Arctic sea ice loss is seen in every single month throughout the year, as shown in Figures 1e and 1f…
The same picture—indicating a severe slowdown in Arctic sea ice loss—also emerges when considering sea ice volume. The loss of Arctic sea ice volume has stalled for at least the past 15 years (Figure S2 in Supporting Information S1), consistent with previous work (J. Zhang, 2021)…
Various aspects of this pause in Arctic sea ice loss have been documented in recent studies (Polyakov et al., 2023; Stern, 2025; Sumata et al., 2023), building a consistent picture of a thinner ice cover which has remained basically unchanged since the late 2000s.
Altogether, strong observational evidence reveals a sustained and pervasive pause in Arctic sea ice loss over the recent 15–20 years, highly robust to the choice of sea ice metric, observational product, and season, and we are led to ask: is such a pause unexpected?
Turns out the refereed literature contradicts the meteorologists’ press release: are you surprised?
I’ll spare us both the reproduction of the modelling exercises undertaken to answer the question at the end of the above quote; instead, I’ll cite a bit more from the conclusions & discussion of England et al.:
It is perhaps surprising that while global temperatures have risen rapidly, reaching record levels in the last few years, Arctic sea ice cover has shown no statistically significant decline over the past two decades.
Nonetheless, analyzing two observational data sets and thousands of simulations from the CMIP5 and CMIP6 archives, we have established the following facts, which address the four questions raised in the introduction:
- The pervasive slowdown of Arctic sea ice loss is robust across the choice of definitions, observational data set, and season.
- This observed pause in ice loss is simulated relatively frequently (a nearly 20 percent chance) in climate models, and is thus to be expected even under high emission scenarios.
- If model simulations are accurate, the recent pause may plausibly continue for an additional five to 10 years. However, this pause also heightens the risk of a more rapid decline in sea ice cover in the coming years [this may or may not come to pass].
- Nearly all models analyzed suggest an important role for internal climate variability in slowing the anthropogenically-forced sea ice loss [I’m certain this is the please-fund-us-in-the-future clause, because the paper argues that observations are in line with natural variability].
Returning to the relative contributions of human influence and internal variability, our results indicate that if the slowdown is in fact a predominantly anthropogenically forced episode there must be either some missing forcing or common model deficiency in response to known forcings [ouch]…
Going forward, how can we use what we have learned about the recent pause in Arctic sea ice loss? First, if internal variability has played an important role then the present slowdown could provide a source of future predictability of Arctic climate change in the same manner as Yeager et al. (2015) (see our Figure S5 in Supporting Information S1).
Some studies (Stern, 2025; Sumata et al., 2023) have characterized this period as a regime shift in Arctic sea ice cover, which may also help to narrow sea ice trend projections. Second, the pause period could be used as an out of sample test in future climate model evaluation—like the early and middle periods of the 20th century (Bianco et al., 2024; Chen & Dai, 2024; Flynn et al., 2023).
Nonetheless, the results of our study is a reminder that one needs to be cautious about multi-decadal predictions of the climate system, especially in highly variable regions such as the Arctic.
Standing in 2007 or 2012 after having experienced yet another year of record loss and listening to assessments that climate models are flawed in their ability to reproduce the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice (Stroeve et al., 2007), it would take a rather brave person to have predicted that a sustained slowdown in ice loss was around the corner, although, as we have shown, and several studies have documented (Kay et al., 2011; Swart et al., 2015; R. Zhang, 2015), the current pause is entirely consistent with the state-of-the-art model simulations.
The main take-away appears to be: observations are destroying the models that were used in the past (this is known as ‘hing-casting’, i.e., running data against past climate models™); once more recent data becomes available, the models magically (sic) improve…this isn’t much more than scientism, but it has little, if anything, to do with the scientific method.
With these notions considered, let’s return to the piece I translated above.
An Inconvenient Admission
You see, it’s not just me who points to these notions, but there’s also this hilarious article about the Meteorological Institute’s press release by Ole Østlid on the website Værstat.no:
On August 21, Værstat wrote about new research on the development of sea ice in the Arctic [that’s the press release I translated above]…
Værstat has taken a closer look at the article and found significant omissions. The day after Værstat contacted MET, the article was updated.
The claims made are contradicted by the peer-reviewed research that has found a marked slowdown in the reduction of sea ice extent [and that’s the study we discussed earlier].
Værstat has previously pointed to data that also shows that the volume of sea ice in the Arctic has been stable since 2011. NRK had to correct a story where they claimed that ‘sea ice will become increasingly thinner’ in 2022.
Why has MET omitted such important information?
Some Relevant Nuances Omitted in the Editing Process
Værstat contacted MET and asked about the claims that the ice continues to shrink, and referred to statistics that show stable development in sea ice volume in the Arctic over the past 15 years.
Signe Aaboe, a researcher at the Meteorological Institute and sea ice monitor, has answered questions. She explains that the claims are based on the long-term development in both the extent and thickness of the sea ice, based on both satellite observations and model-based analyses.
When it comes to claims that sea ice is shrinking, reference is made to the 30-year reference period that sea ice has been set at 1981-2010.
Regarding the years after 2010, Aaboe writes the following:
‘You are right that if you look at a shorter period, for example the last 10-15 years, the sea ice extent in September shows a slight negative trend, but not a statistically significant decline as before. Instead, we see large variations from year to year.’
Aaboe refers to the research article that Værstat wrote about in August, which shows that we have not seen a statistically significant trend in the last 20 years [again, that’s the paper we discussed above].
When it comes to the published story, Aaboe writes that certain facts have been omitted in the editing ‘to reach a wider audience’ [so, the Science™ once more says they’re dumbing down stuff so that John and Jane Q. Public read their nonsense while claiming that doing so will somehow increase the public’s trust™ in the Science™]:
‘The published story on met.no was simplified in order to reach a wider audience. Some technical nuances, such as that this year’s winter ice was at a record low from December to March and again for much of June, and that the September trend in recent years has levelled off somewhat, were unfortunately omitted in the process.’ [how unfortunate that Scientism-peddler Aaboe did so, eh?]
MET does not explain why the newsworthy fact that sea ice in the minimum month has been stable in recent years has been omitted ‘to reach a wider audience’.
On 7 October, the day after Værstat contacted them, MET added the following text to the article:
‘Updated on 7 October: When we write in this article that sea ice is shrinking, we are referring to how much less sea ice extent has become since measurements began in 1978, as the map below shows.’
MET thus acknowledges that the article was flawed, but still refuses to disclose the research report that concluded that the decline in the minimum month over the past 20 years has not been statistically significant.
And this, dear readers, is how the Science™ does its dirty deeds.
See more here substack.com
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