Papua Indonesia
The only remaining glaciers between the Himalayas and Andes Mountains are found at 4884 meters above sea level at Puncak Jaya in Papua, New Guinea, Indonesia (4.083°S; 137.167°E). The glaciers at Puncak Jaya have substantial cultural and spiritual significance to the local communities [1]. In June 2010, an expedition to retrieve ice cores from this location was completed. Two ice cores were drilled to bedrock from the mountain’s western peak (named D1 and D1B) measuring 32.13 m and 31.25 m in length, respectively. An additional 26.19 m ice core (named D2) was drilled on the eastern peak [2]. These ice cores remain the only ones drilled from this part of the world [1].
The ice core-derived oxygen stable isotope records (δ18O) from Puncak Jaya provide insight into the climate variability of the Western Pacific Warm Pool going back to 1964 CE. In particular, the records show that the modern retreat of the glaciers at the site is exacerbated by warming and the tropical Pacific phenomenon known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation [2].
Stake measurements made at the drill site showed that the ice thinned at a rate of 1.05 m/yr between when the ice cores were drilled in 2010 and November 2015. Additional measurements in the summer of 2016 revealed that the ice thickness had diminished an additional 4.26 m during the preceding El Niño months [2]. At the current rates, the ice fields at Puncak Jaya are predicted to be completely lost within the next few years [1], at which point the only remaining ice from these glaciers will be stored in the freezers at The Ohio State University.
References
[1] Thompson, L. G., Davis, M. E., Mosley-Thompson, E., Porter, S. E., Corrales, G. V., Shuman, C. A., & Tucker, C. J. (2021). The impacts of warming on rapidly retreating high-altitude, low-latitude glaciers and ice core-derived climate records. Global and Planetary Change, 203, 103538. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2021.103538
[2] Permana, D. S., Thompson, L. G., Mosley-Thompson, E., Davis, M. E., Lin, P.-N., Nicolas, J. P., Bolzan, J. F., Bird, B. W., Mikhalenko, V. N., Gabrielli, P., Zagorodnov, V., Mountain, K. R., Schotterer, U., Hanggoro, W., Habibie, M. N., Kaize, Y., Gunawan, D., Setyadi, G., Susanto, R. D., … Mark, B. G. (2019). Disappearance of the last tropical glaciers in the Western Pacific Warm Pool (Papua, Indonesia) appears imminent. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(52), 26382–26388. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1822037116