Indonesia Carstensz Pyramid: Papua's 'eternal snow' on Puncak Jaya is about to disappear forever
The mountains of Papua are not far from the equator, but they've been topped with "eternal snow" for centuries.
They're also the epicentre of the spiritual universe for many Papuans - a Mecca or a Vatican, as one activist puts it.
A century ago, the 300km (190-mile) stretch of the Sudirman Range had snow and permanent ice on all four of its major peaks.
Glacier cover around the peak has shrunk from nearly 1,900 hectares (4,700 acres) in the 19th Century to about 16 hectares (40 acres) today. Almost entire glaciers have vanished within a human lifetime.
"There is a profound unfairness in this," says Marie Šabacká, a Czech glacier ecologist who travelled to Puncak Jaya last March in a bid to be among the last scientists to study Papua's "eternal snow".
Ice cores taken from the slopes of Puncak Jaya preserve a record of climate history.
But this archive is disappearing before scientists have had time to fully study it.
The snow cover has reduced dramatically since this photo, taken in 1936
The retreat of Papua's glaciers is driven by the same forces affecting ice around the world, Šabacká notes, a warming atmosphere caused by human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
El Niño events can accelerate this process, while local factors such as cloud cover, snowfall and mountain topography influence its pace.
A small increase in temperature, a higher freezing point or shift from snowfall to rainfall can determine whether a glacier survives at all, she adds.
Šabacká, seen taking samples from Puncak Jaya, says Papua's vanishing glaciers are unique as they are so far from other glacier systems
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- The mountains of Papua are not far from the equator, but they've been topped with "eternal snow" for centuries.
- They're also the epicentre of the spiritual universe for many Papuans - a Mecca or a Vatican, as one activist puts it.
- A century ago, the 300km (190-mile) stretch of the Sudirman Range had snow and permanent ice on all four of its major peaks.
- Glacier cover around the peak has shrunk from nearly 1,900 hectares (4,700 acres) in the 19th Century to about 16 hectares (40 acres) today. Almost entire glaciers have vanished within a human lifetime.
- "There is a profound unfairness in this," says Marie Šabacká, a Czech glacier ecologist who travelled to Puncak Jaya last March in a bid to be among the last scientists to study Papua's "eternal snow".