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Indonesia’s only glaciers melting faster amid climate crisis, El Niño
Researchers found last year that the Puncak Jaya glaciers had shrunk to 0.23 square kilometers in total, equivalent to 32 soccer fields.
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The glaciers of the Puncak Jaya summit in Papua’s central highlands are pictured on July 2, 2010. (AFP/David Christenson/Papua Project Freeport McMoran)
R
ising global temperatures are causing Indonesia’s only glaciers to melt faster, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) announced on Tuesday, with this year’s El Niño contributing to their decline.
The summit of Puncak Jaya in Papua’s Jayawijaya mountain range hosts some of the world’s few glaciers at tropical latitudes.
In 2010, they were 32 meters deep at their thickest point, according to BMKG data. But the ice melted at an average rate of 1 meter per year between 2010 and 2015.
“During the strong El Niño of 2015 and 2016, the melting rate even reached up to 5 m per year,” BMKG head Dwikorita Karnawati said during a live-streamed seminar on Tuesday.
The El Niño climactic phenomenon tends to bring hotter and drier air to the Indonesian archipelago and prolong the dry season.
Read also: Indonesia's tiny glaciers to melt away in a decade: Study
The BMKG takes periodic ice core samples from the Puncak Jaya glaciers alongside researchers from Ohio State University, with the support of mining company PT Freeport Indonesia.
