Puncak Jaya in Papua is one of the few places near the equator where ice has survived for centuries. At 4,884 meters above sea level, the mountain is high enough to remain cold enough for glaciers to persist in the tropics, earning its ice the Indonesian nickname salju abadi, or “eternal snow.”
But the “eternal” ice is now disappearing. In 1850, Puncak Jaya was covered by about 19.3 square kilometers of ice. By 2024, only 0.165 square kilometers remained.
That means more than 99 percent of the glacier's ice has disappeared in roughly 174 years. Compared with 2018, the remaining ice had also shrunk by about 65 percent by 2024.
Puncak Jaya is the last tropical glacier in the Western Pacific Warm Pool. Two studies published in 2019 and 2025 have warned that its remaining ice is now heading toward extinction.
A Glacier Nearing Its Final Days
It is difficult to imagine what Puncak Jaya Glacier once looked like when compared with its condition today.
In 1850, its ice covered about 19.3 square kilometers. A reconstruction in The Cryosphere shows that the area had fallen to 13 square kilometers by 1936, 6.4 square kilometers by 1972, 2.15 square kilometers by 2000, and about 0.43 square kilometers by 2010. The change did not happen over a matter of months.
Air temperatures in the region also began warming in the late 19th century. The latest reconstruction confirms that temperature has been the dominant factor driving the glacier's retreat.
But the situation is now very different. So little ice remains that the question is no longer whether Puncak Jaya Glacier will continue to shrink, but when it will disappear completely.
The Glacier Was Losing Ice Fast
In 2010, researchers came to East Northwall Firn, one part of the Puncak Jaya Glacier. They drilled through the ice all the way to the bedrock and recovered two ice cores, each more than 31 meters long.
At the time, there were still tens of meters of ice beneath their feet.
Five years later, they returned to measure the surface. They found that about 5 meters of ice had already disappeared, an average loss of 1.05 meters per year since 2010.
Then came the strong El Niño of 2015–2016. In just about six months, by May 2016, the ice surface had dropped another 4.26 meters. Several months later, in November, another 1.43 meters had disappeared.
The numbers show just how quickly the change was happening. Ice that took an extremely long time to form was disappearing within years, even meter by meter.
Weather observations at the site since 1997 offer another clue. Average daily temperatures have almost never fallen below freezing. That means new snow has increasingly little chance of surviving long enough to replace the ice that is lost.
The Last Ice Is Breaking Into Pieces
Satellite imagery makes the change even clearer.
When researchers looked at Puncak Jaya again using satellite imagery from 2023–2024, they found just 0.165 square kilometers of ice remaining. Still within the same study, that figure provided the latest picture of just how close the glacier is to extinction.
The remaining ice no longer forms one large expanse. Instead, it is divided into two main masses: East Northwall Firn, covering about 0.134 square kilometers, and Carstensz Glacier, covering about 0.031 square kilometers.
Compared with 2018, about 65 percent of the ice had disappeared in just six years.
The Final Years of Papua’s Last Glacier
That question had already emerged long before the glacier reached its current size.
In 2019, a study published in PNAS used a mass-balance model to estimate the future of Puncak Jaya Glacier. The results showed that if the rate of ice loss continued, the glacier could disappear within the following decade.
Then, a 2025 study in The Cryosphere revisited the glacier's condition using satellite imagery taken in 2023 and 2024. The researchers compared those images with records of glacier extent from earlier years, including 2018, to determine how quickly the ice was retreating.
The result was stark. If the rate of retreat since 2018 continues, the Puncak Jaya glaciers are expected to disappear around 2030.
Observations from Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency (BMKG) show that the process is still underway. The ice covered about 0.23 square kilometers in 2022, but was estimated to have shrunk to 0.11–0.16 square kilometers in 2024 and about 0.09 square kilometers by September 2025.
In July 2026, BMKG estimated that all the remaining ice could disappear by the end of 2026 or early 2027.
If that happens, what disappears will be more than a sheet of ice on a mountain peak. Papua will lose its last tropical glacier.
More than 99 percent of Puncak Jaya Glacier is already gone. Now, we are watching the final chapter of Papua's last tropical glacier.
