El Nino could doom Indonesia’s rare ‘Eternity’ tropical glaciers by 2026
- ‘The glaciers might vanish before 2026 or even faster and El Nino could accelerate the melting process,’ says nation’s geophysics agency
- Such an event in Papua’s Jayawijaya mountains may disrupt the regional ecosystem and trigger a rise in global sea levels within a decade
Two of the world’s few tropical glaciers in Indonesia are melting, their ice under threat to vanish by 2026 or sooner, as an El Nino weather pattern lengthens the dry season in the southeast Asian nation, its geophysics agency said on Wednesday.
Indonesia, home to a third of the world’s rainforest after Brazil and Congo, expects the dry season could run until October as El Nino increases the risk of forest fires and threatens supplies of clean water.
While the agency has warned that the Pacific weather phenomenon could make this year’s dry season the most severe since 2019, one of its climate researchers said it could also imperil Indonesia’s 12,000-year-old tropical glaciers.
“The glaciers might vanish before 2026, or even faster, and El Nino could accelerate the melting process,” said Donaldi Permana, referring to the so-called ‘Eternity Glaciers’.
The glaciers, which he said were among the few left in the tropics, are the 4,884 metre (16,000ft) Carstensz Pyramid and the East Northwall Firn, which is 4,700 metres (15,420ft) high, in the Jayawijaya mountains in the easternmost region of Papua.
The glaciers have thinned significantly in the past few years, Donaldi said, going to 8 metres (26ft) in 2021 from 32 metres (105ft) in 2010, while their total area fell to 0.23 square kilometres in 2022, from 2.4 square kilometres in 2000.