A new international study led by glaciologist Lander Van Tricht of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and ETH Zürich found that glaciers across Central Asia lost roughly 30 km³ of ice in 2025 — nearly 2% of the region’s total remaining glacier volume, and equivalent to about 30% of all ice still present in the European Alps today. The findings, published in Environmental Research Letters on May 21, draw on field observations from 16 glaciers in the Tien Shan and Pamir mountains combined with regional modelling, and show that 9 of those 16 glaciers recorded their most negative mass balance ever observed, while 64% of all glaciers in the region experienced their worst year since at least 1991. The driver was a combination of persistently warm conditions from spring through late summer and a sharp reduction in snowfall during the melt season — exposing darker bare ice earlier than usual and amplifying melt through the snow-ice albedo feedback.
Van Tricht described 2025 as “exceptional” because extreme losses occurred across almost the entire region simultaneously, with the western Pamir and western Tien Shan hardest hit: some glaciers there shed between 2% and 4% of their total ice in a single year. The researchers place the event within a broader pattern of successive regional glacier records — the European Alps and Pyrenees in 2022, western North America in 2023, Svalbard in 2024 — and warn that conditions like 2025 could become increasingly normal as warming reduces not only ice mass but also the frequency of protective summer snowfall. The stakes are high: Central Asian glaciers are the primary dry-season water source for agriculture, hydropower, and drinking water across Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, and their long-term decline already contributes to recurring water-sharing tensions in the region. The study was published in the UN-designated International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation.