Climate Change at the Top of Mount Jayawijaya: Everlasting Snow is No Longer Everlasting?

Everlasting is supposed to mean eternal or lasting. But if it disappears, can we still say it's everlasting? Such is the case with the snow at the top of Mount Jayawijaya, Indonesia.

This snow is known as everlasting snow. Even the locals consider this snow mountain as something sacred. It is also home to many rare animals from Papua. However, climate change and global warming are changing everything. This everlasting snow is no longer everlasting.

Reporting from Arab News (27/3/2022), the Deputy Director of Climate Research and Air Quality of the Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency said that around 1850, the snow on the top of this mountain originally covered 20 km2. 

The industrial revolution was the beginning of ice melting in the world, including on Mount Jayawijaya. Every year the snow on the mountain's summit gets smaller, both in surface area and thickness. The last measured snow area in May 2020 was only 0.34 km2.

Meanwhile, the thickness of the snow, which was initially measured at 32 m thick back in 2010, was measured again in 2021 and has become 8 m thick. Therefore, the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency stated that this everlasting snow could become extinct between 2025 and 2027.

Why would this everlasting snow become extinct? Obviously, global warming and climate change. Temperatures have risen drastically in recent years, causing the snow on the mountaintops to melt. In addition, high water precipitation can erode the snow on the surface of the mountain peaks so that the snow will thin or even disappear. 

Why water? Because high temperature increases cause rain to fall no longer in the form of ice or snow but in the form of water. The Director of Climate Change of the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency, Dodo Gunawan, said that the glaciers at the top of Jayawijaya will become extinct due to global warming. 

Reporting from Arab News (27/3/2022), he stated that, although the glacier has been melting for years, increasing global temperatures and reduced rainfall that has been exacerbated by El Nino—a phenomenon that causes tropical ocean water and atmospheric temperatures to get warmer—has sped up the thinning of the glacier.

The existence of snow or glaciers at the top of Jayawijaya certainly plays an important role in various aspects of people's lives. With the extinction of snow at the top of this mountain, Indonesia will also lose the icon of everlasting ice in the tropics. 

On the other hand, there are also the lives of living creatures that are threatened, such as the singing dog Dingo, which lives in the highlands of Papua after being thought to be extinct decades ago. In addition, the lives of humans living in the area are also threatened. 

Those who live around the mountain mostly work as guides for climbers heading to the Carstenz Region. With the extinction of this everlasting snow, it will reduce their income because it can affect the number of visits of climbers. 

To overcome this problem, the awareness and cooperation of the entire community and government are needed to take actions that can help prevent higher temperatures and more extreme climate change. Mitigation efforts that have begun to be carried out by the government will not run smoothly if there is no public awareness to fix this climate change problem together. 

Mitigation actions can start with simple things. From planting trees and replacing plastics with non-plastic materials to the large things, such as replacing motorized vehicles that use gasoline into electric or hybrid vehicles (a combination of gasoline and electricity). 

It is hoped that the mitigation efforts that we make together can help reduce the rise of more extreme temperatures.