Rapid melting of Carstensz ice
Rapid melting of Carstensz ice
SYDNEY (Reuter): Asia's only permanently ice-capped tropical mountain is rapidly losing its mantle of ice in a further sign that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are warming the planet, an Australian scientist said yesterday.
Ice once covered almost 20 square km (7.7 square miles) of the remote mountain in eastern Indonesia, but now spans only three square km (one square mile) and is clinging on to the peaks, said Jim Peterson, an expert on glaciers.
Peterson, who has visited the Carstensz Mountain or Puncak Jayawijaya four times since 1971, said the dramatic shrinkage of the ice-cap was due to a warming of about 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last several centuries.
Carstensz, just four degrees south of the equator, is the highest mountain between the Himalayas and the Andes at an altitude of 4,884 meters (16,023 feet).
"It's retreating because of a temperature warming and some of that warming must be attributable to the enhanced greenhouse," said Peterson, who last saw the mountain during a flight into Indonesia's eastern Irian Jaya province last year.
The enhanced greenhouse effect is caused by man-made emissions of gases like carbon dioxide, he told Reuters.
Peterson and a colleague, Australian botanist Geoff Hope, began mapping glacial retreat on the mountain when they climbed the peak in 1971, using geological evidence to estimate the original size of the ice-cap.
But Hope, who also saw the mountain from the air last June, was stunned how far the mountain's glaciers had retreated in just over 20 years.
"I was really astounded to see how much retreat had taken place," Hope was quoted as saying on Thursday by The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.
"One of the major glacial areas was completely doomed. There's still a mass of ice but it's rapidly melting away."
In the last 60 years, the snow line has crept about 100 metres (330 ft) higher to 4,600 metres (15,100 ft), Peterson said.
If the ice-cap continues to melt at its present rate, he said, "it will shrink to be snow domes on the very high peaks".