Vanjyakh Glacier in GBAO renamed Tajikistan Glacier

The Vanjyakh Glacier in Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) has been officially renamed the Tajikistan Glacier, according to a government resolution signed on June 3, 2026, and reported by the state-run news agency Khovar.
The decree, titled «On renaming ‘Vanjyakh Glacier’ to ‘Tajikistan Glacier’,» formalizes the new designation for one of the most significant glaciers in the country.
The glacier is considered the longest not only in Tajikistan but also among all glaciers outside the polar regions. It stretches 77 kilometers and covers an area of approximately 700 square kilometers.
Within Eurasia, only the Karakoram glaciers — Siachen and Baltoro — surpass it in size, with Siachen measuring about 76 kilometers in length and around 750 square kilometers in area, and Baltoro stretching 62 kilometers with a similar area of about 750 square kilometers.
The Vanjyakh glacier system comprises around 100 individual glaciers.
International scientific research
In 2025, an international scientific expedition was conducted on the glacier as part of the RECAP project (Research on Climate and Cryosphere in the Pamirs), involving researchers from Tajikistan, Germany, and France. The fieldwork took place from July 19 to August 23, 2025.
The main objective of the expedition was to establish a long-term monitoring system to study climate change and glaciological processes in one of Central Asia’s key freshwater reservoirs.
Researchers transported heavy equipment manually to altitudes above 5,000 meters, working under extreme conditions of low oxygen, cold temperatures, and difficult terrain. Despite the challenges, they successfully installed an autonomous monitoring station transmitting real-time data to a central database.
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