■ Current Status and Scale of Damage
○ On Mount Puncak Jaya in West Papua, Indonesia, there are tropical glaciers called 'eternal snow' in the local language and 'eternity glaciers' in English. This is the last tropical glacier remaining in Oceania.
○ Among the two remaining glaciers, the larger one has lost 95% of its area since 2002, and according to a paper published last month by Indonesian researchers, the entire Papua tropical glacier lost 97% of its mass between 1980 and 2024.
○ Of the originally six glaciers, four have already completely disappeared, and researchers project that the remaining two will also disappear before the 2030s.
○ A separate study released in December 2024 used satellite imagery and digitized maps to confirm that glacier area has decreased by over 99% compared to 1850, and by approximately 65% since the last survey in 2018.
■ Cause Analysis
○ Carbon pollution from fossil fuel combustion has raised the global average temperature by approximately 1.4°C compared to pre-industrial levels, which is a direct cause of tropical glacier loss.
○ The Puncak Jaya glacier is located in one of the regions with the highest precipitation on Earth, and it is analyzed to have been significantly affected by the strong El Niño phenomenon in 2023-2024.
■ Investigation and Documentation Activities
○ Klaus Thymann, director of environmental organization Project Pressure, led a two-week expedition in November 2024 and conducted photogrammetry surveys using drones and satellite positioning systems.
○ This expedition was conducted in collaboration with geospatial technology companies Trimble and Pix4D, with drones used to supplement the limitations of satellite surveys. While satellite surveys have precision limitations due to clouds, terrain shadows, and revisit cycle issues, drones can obtain high-precision imagery by utilizing brief periods without clouds.
○ Another purpose of the expedition is to create a 'digital Noah's ark' by building a 3D model before the glacier completely disappears.
■ Future Outlook and Impact
○ Even in the best-case climate response scenario, one-quarter of the world's glacier mass is projected to be lost by 2100, which is feared to have severe impacts on freshwater and food security.
○ David Ibel, a researcher at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, states that the likelihood of glacier reformation over the coming centuries is very low, making it an irreversible loss for local communities and future generations.
■ Glossary
* Photogrammetry: A technology that precisely measures the shape, position, and size of objects using photographs or videos, and is used to create 3D terrain models based on drone-captured images.
* El Niño: A climate phenomenon in which sea surface temperatures at the Pacific equator rise abnormally, affecting global weather patterns including precipitation and temperature.
