Geologists from the Ohio State University estimates that there are glaciers in the mountains of Puncak Jaya, Papua, endangered missing because of melting. Snow in the mountains was melting because of global warming. “It is estimated that the ice will last several more years,” said Lonnie Thompson, a senior researcher at the research center from Ohio State’s Byrd Polar, who is also professor of the School of Earth Sciences

Estimates stated by Thompson after he took the three ice core samples from Mount Puncak Jaya. The study, which is the result of cooperation with the National Science Foundation, the Freeport mining company, and Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) drilled ice core in Puncak Jaya which resides with a height of 16 000 feet, into three basic rock. The first ice along the 30 meters, 32 meters of ice a second, third and m along 26 meters of ice.

According to Thompson, who has performed more than 57 expeditions to the snowy mountains, the length of the existing ice cores in Puncak Jaya, Papua, shorter than the ice core in some other mountain. He gave an example, when you take ice cores from Hualcán, existing in the Andes Mountains of Peru, south-east Pacific Ocean, in 1993, Thompson took ice cores along the 189 meters and 195 meters. Because of the short ice cores in Puncak Jaya, Thomson estimates that the mountains are covered with snow will be gone within the next few years.

According to Thomson, snow-capped mountains of Puncak Jaya begin to shrink in recent years. From the results of satellite image shows the ice in the mountain area has lost about 80 percent since 1936, or two thirds of the last scientific expedition carried out at the premises at the beginning of 1970.

Thomson explained that the study was conducted to reconstruct climate changes that occurred more than 500 years. Apart from ice cores in Puncak Jaya, Papua, and the Andes Mountains, Peru, the team had to take ice cores from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.

Ice core from the Puncak Jaya, Papua, is expected to add a note of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the phenomenon of extreme climate changes that are dominant in the tropics. In addition to taking the ice cores, the team collects rainwater samples from various locations, from the foot of the mountain to the top of the mountain.

This study shall be notified to the amount of oxygen and isotopes of hydrogen from nuclei of ice and rain, which indicates a change in temperature.If the ice core dust and rain water in there, which means an increase in forest fires or burning in the surrounding mountains.

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