408bn tonnes of glacier ice lost during 2025

Glaciers around the world continued to lose ice at an exceptionally high rate in 2025 according to a major international assessment supported by University of Birmingham research.

The study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment looks at the majority of Earth’s glaciers which lost an estimated 408 billion tonnes of ice during the 2025 hydrological year. The ice loss, which excludes large ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, contributed approximately 1.1mm to global sea levels, underlining the growing impact of climate change on frozen regions of the planet.

The largest average glacier losses in 2025 were recorded in North America, Iceland and Central Europe, while the most unusual departures from long-term climate averages were seen in Western Canada, and Svalbard in Norway.

Dr Nick Barrand, a glaciologist at the University of Birmingham, contributed specialist datasets and expertise to the global analysis, which brings together observations from national monitoring networks and research institutions worldwide.