Central Asia’s Karakoram Mountains have not undergone any warming since 1851, a trend that is inconsistent with claims that modern warming has been global in scale.

Per a new study‘s reconstruction of summer temperatures over the last 170 years, this region has cooled dramatically (by nearly 1°C) since the 1980s. This “anomalous” cooling trend has led to glacier stability and even advance over the last several decades.

“Since the late 20th century, the decrease of summer temperature in the last decades has been one of the main drivers of the Karakorum anomaly.”

Image Source: Liu et al., 2025