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What comes to your mind when you think of tropical landscapes?
Lush rainforests, cascading green fields? You probably don’t think about glaciers.
Lorentz National Park, in the disputed province of Papua New Guinea in Indonesia, is home to the region’s last tropical glacier.
Some call it the Eternity Glacier, but it may not be there for much longer.
“Even some Indonesians don’t know we have a glacier,” says Donaldi Permana, senior researcher at the Indonesian Meteorological Bureau, BMKG.
“It is melting from the industrial revolution.
“Puncak Jaya has no ice on the summit, but around it there are several ice masses, which used to be a large glacier.”
Tropical glaciers are one of the most sensitive indicators of climate change and there are only a handful left in the world: in Papua, South America and Africa.
Puncak Jaya is the highest mountain in Indonesia and the highest peak between the Himalayas and the Andes.
At an altitude of 4,884 meters above sea level, temperatures drop and the rain turns into snow, which in turn compacts into the glacier.
As one of the wettest regions on Earth, it rains nearly 300 days a year, but warm temperatures mean the rain no longer turns into snow.
The glacier is melting from above and below.
“We call it basal melting, melting from the bottom. As the darker area around the glacier gets bigger, it absorbs more solar radiation, so it gets warmer,” said Dr.
“It’s a feedback loop. Also, the ground the glacier is on isn’t flat, so the ice can slide off even faster.”
The numbers confirm the exponential merger. In 1850 the glacier area was 19.3 square kilometers. In 1972 it was 7.3 km2. In 2018, it was only 0.5 km2.
Scientists predict that the glacier will have completely disappeared, at best, by 2026, but more than likely by next year.
It will take vital clues to the Earth’s climate change with it.
Extracted from a dying glacier
Papua Glacier is one of three areas with remaining tropical glaciers.
In the Andes mountain range in Peru and scattered across Africa, tropical glaciers are shrinking, but as Puncak Jaya is the lowest in elevation, it will be the first to go.
Glaciers have their own individual characteristics influenced by the surrounding environment.
In Africa and South America there are distinguishable dry seasons, where dust is collected by rain and eventually turns into snow.
If you were to cut these glaciers like a cake, you would see the annual dust layers and be able to calculate the age of the glacier.
“The Peruvian ice core has been dated to around 1,800 years. And in Africa it can be 11,000 years old. But in Papua, because it always rains, we can’t date it that easily,” says Dr. Permana.
In 2010 he was part of a research group that extracted ice cores from the Papua glacier. Thirty-two meter long ice tubes were drilled to the rock.
“We thought we could find leaves or insects to do some carbon dating. But we only found an indicator of time,” says Dr. Permana.
“At 24 meters deep, we found deposits of tritium, which is associated with nuclear tests conducted in 1964”.
In 1964 the Soviet Union and China conducted a series of nuclear tests, flooding the planet with tritium and leaving trace elements in the ice.
What exists today on Puncak Jaya is thought to be the remains of glaciers that have existed for around 5,000 years, however many of those years have melted.
“The bottom, 32 meters deep, is associated with the 1920s, so we can say that the glacier is about 90 years old,” says Dr. Permana.
“But it’s melting from above and below, so it’s hard to tell how old she is.”
An intercontinental climate puzzle
Papuan ice core mining provided the second piece of a climate puzzle.
“We already had ice cores from the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean. South American carrots were mined in the 1980s, so we wanted a record on the other side – the western side, in Papua. We wanted to see what the ENSO looked like. as based on two tropical glaciers, “says Dr. Permuna.
ENSO, the southern El Niño swing, occurs every two to seven years. The 2015/2016 El Niño event brought warmer and drier conditions, which could lead to increased ice loss.
This is exactly what the research team found by comparing the two cores.
They also concluded that “regional warming has exceeded a threshold such that the next very strong El Niño event could lead to the disappearance of the only remaining tropical glaciers between the Himalayas and the Andes.”
Climatologists predict that we are now heading towards La Niña, typically defined by the wetter conditions in Indonesia, but Dr. Permana suggests its effects would be short-lived.
“We have to remember that not only water vapor is needed to build glaciers, but also cold temperatures. And we know that temperatures increase year after year,” he says.
“You can have snow for several days, but to build a glacier, you need the snow to compact and the temperature to stay cold for at least a year.”
A glacier is more than just a glacier
Global warming is affecting communities around the world in countless ways.
In Africa, fewer snow-capped peaks will see a drop in tourism dollars.
In Peru, the glacial retreat will mean a shortage of drinking water for the people downstream.
There is no shortage of water in Indonesia.
The effect of melting ice is much more intangible, but no less profound.
“There are local tribes living around this glacier who believe this glacier is a sacred place,” says Dr. Permana.
“They believe this glacier is their god. By removing the ice from the glacier at the top of the mountain, you remove the brain of their god.”
It is no wonder, then, that Dr. Permana and his research group encountered some resistance when extracting ice cores from the glacier.
“Young people understand the science of climate change, but older people haven’t considered it,” he says.
“That’s why it’s called Eternity Glacier.
“But soon they will lose this glacier.”
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