Overview

• An ISTA-led team reports in Communications Earth & Environment that previously stable Pamir glaciers are shifting toward accelerated mass loss.
• A climate station installed on Tajikistan’s Kyzylsu Glacier in 2021, combined with modeling of 1999–2023 conditions, underpins the findings.
• Reduced snowfall since around 2018 has thinned protective snowpack and left ice more vulnerable to summer melting.
• Increased glacier melt is currently replacing about one-third of the runoff lost to reduced precipitation, offering only temporary relief and not enough to revive the Aral Sea.
• The monitoring network was automated in summer 2025 with local teams trained to maintain it, and researchers caution it remains uncertain whether the shift is permanent or region-wide.