Asia’s last tropical glaciers can be found near Puncak Jaya, Papua, the highest peak in Southeast Asia. But it is unlikely that they will survive until the end of this decade. Over the past 44 years, the peak has lost 97% of its ice and four of its glaciers. Its remaining two glaciers, Carstensz and the East Northwall Firn glacier, are expected to disappear by 2030, adding Indonesia (alongside Venezuela and Slovenia) to the list of countries that have lost all of their glaciers.
The rise in global temperatures has directly contributed to global glacier melt. For Indonesia’s glaciers, this has been punctuated by El Niño years. The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a global climate phenomenon characterized by weather patterns that alternate between La Niña and El Niño conditions that affect each region of the planet in different ways. In Indonesia, El Niño conditions have dramatically increased glacier melt.
“For Papua, it becomes dry and warm during El Niño, which means less snow at high elevations and more melting. Both can be a death knell, especially to a small glacier,” said Mike Kaplan, a geologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School. He studies the history of glaciers, climates and past landscapes. During the recent El Niño event between 2015 and 2016, Indonesia’s glaciers took a big hit.
“Warming causes the freezing level altitude to rise, meaning more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, which accelerates melting instead of nourishing the glacier,” said Donaldi Permana, a climate researcher who led glacial monitoring at BMKG, Indonesia’s meteorological, climatological and geophysical agency. In an interview with GlacierHub, Permana explained how the vertical thinning rate increased from around 1.0m/year to 5.3m during the 2015-16 El Niño event—an nearly five-fold increase.
Permana and his team used ice cores recovered in 2010 to review the area’s climate variability over the past half century. The 32-meter-long ice core revealed the effects of ENSO during this time period. The team concluded that the significant positive linear trend of ice decline is punctuated by El Niño and they modeled future ice loss based on this trend.
“Modeling and recent observations show a terminal decline. Area decreased from about 19.3 km² in 1850 to just about 0.16-0.23 km² by 2022-2024,” Permana said. That means the glacier shrank from the size of roughly 3,500 football fields to just 40. He warned that some models suggested that the glaciers could disappear within the next year. “With the increasing likelihood of a strong El Niño in the second half of 2026, the disappearance of Indonesian glaciers is likely to happen in 2026-2027.” The fate of these glaciers may already be sealed.
“[Tropical glaciers] could be considered the canary in the coal mine—especially for countries with a small amount of glacial ice to begin with.”
– Mike Kaplan
“Even if today, we could magically stop increasing greenhouse gasses, there is a delay in the climate system,” said Kaplan. Temperatures will continue to increase for a number of years even after greenhouse gas levels stabilize as it takes time for the planet to equilibrate. “In such a hypothetical scenario, the warming may still continue until 2030…. Even under current conditions—that is, even if we stabilized CO2 emissions—it is likely too warm and dry for these glaciers to remain, especially if there is a strong El Niño year.”
The loss of these glaciers is not only an environmental concern, but also a significant cultural loss. For many Indigenous Papuan communities, the glaciers hold sacred value. In an interview with GlacierHub, Wewin Wira Cornelis Wahid, an Indonesian graduate of the M.S. in Sustainability Management (offered by Columbia’s School of Professional Studies and the Columbia Climate School), discussed how this loss will impact the people of his country.
“The summit is regarded as a sacred space where ancestors reside, making the glacier not just a physical feature but a core part of spiritual identity. Its loss therefore represents not only environmental change but also the erosion of cultural heritage,” said Wahid. “Long known locally as ‘salju abadi’ or eternal snow, its rapid disappearance reflects how even something once considered permanent is now highly vulnerable to climate change.”
Tropical glaciers are among the first to go extinct because of their smaller size. Longer and colder winters at higher latitudes often preserve glaciers there, delaying retreat. However, tropical glaciers serve as a warning for glaciers around the world. “The glaciers here could be considered the canary in the coal mine—especially for countries with a small amount of glacial ice to begin with,” said Kaplan.
Permana and his team warn that these peaks are a “warning sign” for the rest of the world, serving as a precursor to the fate awaiting other high-altitude glaciers globally. It may only be a matter of time before other glaciers meet the same end, and the communities tied to them feel the impacts of their disappearance.
