AFP, JAKARTAIndonesia’s little-known glaciers are melting so fast that they could disappear in a decade, a new study has said, underscoring the imminent threat posed by climate change to ice sheets in tropical countries. “Because of the relatively low elevation of the [Papua] glaciers ... these will be the first to go,” said Lonnie Thompson, one of the authors of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. Accelerating melt-off from glaciers and especially ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are driving sea level rises, threatening coastal megacities and small island nations. “Tropical glaciers are mostly smaller and so their response time to variations in climate change is faster compared with larger glaciers and ice sheets,” said Indonesia-based glaciologist Donaldi Permana, also an author on the study. While earlier estimates suggested that Papua’s glaciers have shrunk by about 85 percent in the past few decades, this week’s study said that glaciers, which once covered about 20km2 have shrunk to less than half of 1km2.

Source: Taipei Times December 13, 2019 16:06 UTC