Indonesia’s Puncak Jaya, also known as Carstensz Pyramid, is set to lose its last remaining snow cover within the next couple of years, marking the end of a climatic phenomenon that has persisted for centuries near the equator. Located in the Sudirman mountain range on the island of Papua, these peaks have long served as a critical archive for climate scientists and a spiritual sanctuary for Indigenous communities.
A century ago, all four major peaks in the 300km stretch of the Sudirman Range were capped with permanent ice. Today, those vast glaciers have nearly disappeared. Cover has plummeted from approximately 1,900 hectares in the 19th century to just 16 hectares currently, a loss that researchers describe as vanishing within a single human lifetime.
“There is a profound unfairness in this,” said Marie Šabacká, a Czech glacier ecologist who visited the site last March. She noted that Papua’s tropical glaciers are unique because they are isolated from other global systems by thousands of kilometers, representing the last remaining tropical ice between the Andes and the Himalayas.
Ice cores extracted from Puncak Jaya provide invaluable records of atmospheric conditions and historical shifts in the tropical Pacific and Western Pacific Warm Pool. Scientists warn that this archive is being destroyed before it can be fully studied, driven by warming temperatures caused by fossil fuel combustion.
Because the mountains sit only 450km south of the equator, permanent ice can exist only at high altitudes under very specific climatic conditions. As global temperatures rise, the freezing level moves higher, causing more precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow. Phenomena such as El Niño further accelerate this retreat, while local factors like cloud cover and topography play a role in the pace of melting.
Beyond the scientific loss, the disappearance of the glaciers carries deep cultural weight for at least five Indigenous groups. For the Amungme people, the range is known as Nemangkawi, or the “White Arrow,” symbolizing honesty and moral integrity. Adolfina Kum, an Amungme environmental activist, compared the potential destruction of the peak to the devastation of Mecca for Muslims or the Vatican for Catholics.
“How would Muslims feel if Mecca were destroyed? How would Catholics feel if Rome or the Vatican were destroyed?” Kum asked. “For the Amungme people, that is what it feels like when Nemangkawi is destroyed.”
The region has also undergone significant transformation due to industrial mining. The discovery of vast copper and gold deposits led to the development of the Grasberg mine, one of the world’s largest gold and copper operations, operated by Freeport. While the project brought infrastructure and economic opportunities, it also resulted in environmental degradation and social conflict, with some locals losing access to ancestral lands.
Elfrida Natkime, a young Amungme woman, reflected on the duality of this change. “Every time I see the mountains, I feel amazed, but I also feel sadness,” she said. “Since the company came, I have seen the exploitation. But the development has also provided a livelihood for many people.”
As the ice vanishes, researchers are racing to document what remains. Danish explorer Klaus Thymann, using drones and 3D mapping, created a detailed model showing that the glaciated area has receded by 95% since the early 2000s.
“There’s almost no ice left. Those are the facts,” Thymann stated, emphasizing the power of glaciers as indicators of climate change. He noted that the notion of something described as “eternal” disappearing triggers a powerful reaction.
For local communities, the erosion of the landscape represents more than just environmental change. Kum described the loss as being like pulling out the roots of a tree, leaving the community without its foundation. With Puncak Jaya’s eternal snow facing extinction, both science and spirituality stand to lose a unique part of Earth’s history.
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