Glaciers in the ‘roof of the world’ have suddenly started melting

One of the world’s last stable glacier regions may have finally begun to succumb to global warming, with researchers recording an unprecedented loss of ice across the Pamir mountains of Asia.

For decades, glaciers all over the world have been retreating due to rising temperatures, but in central Asia, a region dubbed “the roof of the world” has bucked this trend. From the 1970s to the early 21st century, glaciers in the western Kunlun mountains, the Karakoram mountains and the eastern Pamir mountains have remained stable or grown slightly.

Fan Yu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues have been monitoring the 3-kilometre-long Kangxiwa glacier in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. The glacier is within the eastern Pamir range and is 5350 metres above sea level at its highest point.

Before 2022, the ice mass of the glacier exhibited some fluctuations but remained in a stable pattern of moderate mass loss, with occasional years showing slight growth.

But since then, ice loss has accelerated. In 2025, the team recorded a record-high loss of ice, equivalent to the entire surface of the glacier losing 1.5 metres of water. This is more than four times greater than the glacier’s average for 2011–2024.

The record-breaking melt seen at Kangxiwa, mirrored at other glaciers across the Pamir mountains, was driven by exceptional heat. Unlike other years, when extreme temperatures were confined to a single month, high temperatures in 2025 persisted throughout the entire melt season.

The findings suggest the glaciers of the Pamir-Karakoram region are no longer an exception to the global trend, and extreme events are likely to further accelerate glacier melt there, say the researchers.

Shaun Eaves at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, says the results are consistent with predictions that human-induced climate change will increase the probability of extreme warm temperatures that can drive glacier melt, but it is too early to conclude that such melting is locked in.

Glacial ice mass measurements have been undertaken at Kangxiwa glacier only since 2011, so it is hard to describe 2025 as extreme in a historical context, he says.