Glacier changes are traditionally quantified in terms of total (regional) mass and area loss, but such
metrics do not fully capture the disappearance of individual glaciers. Yet every glacier, no matter how
small, can matter. Beyond their contribution to sea-level rise or regional water resources, glaciers hold
important cultural, ecological, and societal value, often deeply rooted in local landscapes and
communities. In the context of the UN International Year of Glacier Preservation (2025), this study
therefore shifts the focus towards the fate of individual glaciers worldwide.
To assess glacier extinction, two complementary criteria are used. A glacier is considered disappeared
(extinct) when its area drops below 0.01 km², consistent with commonly used inventory
thresholds, or when its remaining volume falls below 1% of its initial value, indicating that only a
negligible ice body persists. To derive volume and area trajectories for each glacier, three global
glacier models (GloGEM, OGGM, PyGEM) are used, combined with multiple General Circulation Models and
emission scenarios corresponding to projected temperature increases of +1.5°C, +2.0°C,
+2.7°C, and +4.0°C. All trajectories are then combined to determine median extinction years, as
well as Q25 and Q75 ranges (i.e. the 25% and 75% probability intervals). These results are shown on
the map.
Extinction is defined relative to the initial glacier outlines from the Randolph Glacier Inventory
(RGI v6.0). Glacier fragmentation during retreat is not accounted for; all remaining ice within
the original glacier extent is treated as part of the same glacier.
Data sources
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Extinction projections:
Van Tricht, L., Zekollari, H., Huss, M. et al. Peak glacier extinction in the mid-twenty-first
century. Nature Climate Change 16, 143–147 (2026).
doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02513-9
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Regional and glacier-specific results (including those shown here) are publicly
available on Zenodo:
doi:10.5281/zenodo.17371641
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Glacier outlines: RGI Consortium (2017). Randolph Glacier Inventory — A Dataset of
Global Glacier Outlines, Version 6. Boulder, Colorado USA. NSIDC: National Snow and Ice Data Center.
doi:10.7265/4m1f-gd79
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Ice volume: Farinotti, D., Huss, M., Fürst, J. J., Landmann, J.,
Machguth, H., Maussion, F., and Pandit, A.: A consensus estimate for the ice thickness distribution
of all glaciers on Earth. Nat. Geosci., 12, 168–173,
doi:10.1038/s41561-019-0300-3
, 2019.
Acknowledgements
This application is built on open-source software:
MapLibre GL JS (map rendering),
PMTiles (vector
tile streaming),
GeoPandas and
NumPy (data processing),
GDAL / ogr2ogr (tile generation),
and
go-pmtiles
(tile packaging).
The web application was developed with the assistance of Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic),
which laid the foundation for the frontend code and data pipeline structure.