Indonesia's Melting Glacier

The Indonesian Province of Papua in the Island of New Guinea, has lots of specific natural characteristics, one of which being an all year long glacier on the top of Puncak Jaya mountain.

Unfortunately, due to global warming this last remaining glacier in the Pacific has melted by 60% in the last 40 years, and if nothing change it will totally disappear by 2050.

Please find below more details that I have quoted from The Telegraph.  

Indonesia's last remaining glacier 'to disappear' 

The last remaining glacier in the Pacific will disappear within years because of global warming, scientists have warned. 

 

An aerial view of glaciers near the summit of the 4,884-metre (16,000-foot) Puncak Jaya mountain in the Indonesian part of New Guinea island Photo: REUTERS

 

Puncak Jaya, in Indonesia, has melted by 60 per cent in the past 40 years. If it continues at this rate it could vanish completely by 2050. 

Thousands of years ago ice covered much of Papua but today the glacier extends across a surface area of just one square mile. 

Glaciologists trekked to the remote glacier on one of Indonesia’s most isolated corners to carry out the first study there since the early 1970s. 

They found that while the ice has been shrinking throughout the last century the speed has increased dramatically since the last scientific expedition.

Lonnie Thompson, who led the expedition, said: “The Papuan glaciers are dying. Before I was thinking they had a few decades, but now I’d say we’re looking at years.”

Glaciers worldwide are in retreat, with major losses already seen across much of Alaska, the Alps, the Andes and numerous other ranges.

The Papuan glaciers are melting quicker than others because they are unique in lying along the fringe of the world’s warmest ocean.

They are important in understanding more about weather patterns as the region generates El Nino disturbances and influences climate from India’s monsoons to Amazon droughts.

Researchers found that the mountain had lost about 80 per cent of its ice since 1936 — two-thirds of that since the 1970s.