This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A new study led by researchers at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) reveals that glaciers worldwide could lose ice faster than previously projected. Published in Nature Communications, the research shows that accounting for daily weather variability leads to more realistic simulations of glacier melt and results in greater projected ice loss by the end of the century.
The findings highlight the importance of short-lived weather events, such as the exceptional heat waves and extreme melt seasons recently observed in several glacierized regions around the globe. Most global glacier models rely on monthly climate data, which smooth out short-term weather fluctuations. Yet glaciers respond rapidly to individual weather events, including heat waves, heavy precipitation and sudden temperature changes.
A few exceptionally warm days can rapidly remove protective snow cover, exposing darker glacier ice that absorbs more sunlight and melts faster. Similarly, whether heavy precipitation falls as rain or snow can strongly influence glacier accumulation and runoff, particularly when temperatures fluctuate around the freezing point. By resolving these processes day by day, the model better captures rapid transitions between snow-covered and exposed ice surfaces, as well as the associated changes in melting.
"Glaciers don't respond to monthly averages, but to the weather they experience every single day," explains lead author Lander Van Tricht (ETH Zurich / WSL / Vrije Universiteit Brussel). "A heat wave lasting only a few days can cause enormous amounts of ice to melt. By averaging weather conditions over an entire month, we risk underestimating the impact of these extreme events." To better capture these processes, the researchers extended the Global Glacier Evolution Model (GloGEM) to operate at daily resolution, applying it to more than 12,500 glaciers representing 94% of the world's glacier ice volume.
Compared with the traditional monthly approach, the enhanced model better reproduces observed glacier mass loss, particularly during exceptional melt years such as 2022 in the European Alps, 2023 in western North America, 2024 in Svalbard, 2025 in Central Asia and 2026 again in the European Alps. The study shows that the effects of daily weather variability accumulate over time. When projected into the future, the daily model generally predicts faster glacier retreat and greater ice loss than its monthly counterpart, particularly in regions where melting is strongly influenced by short-term temperature fluctuations.
This also translates into a larger projected contribution to global sea-level rise. The daily model used in this study projects a 5%–10% higher 21st-century contribution from glaciers to sea-level rise than its monthly counterpart. "Our findings suggest that existing global projections, which typically rely on monthly climate forcing, may underestimate how quickly glaciers will lose ice in a warming world," says Van Tricht.
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