Indonesia’s last glacier will melt within years

First of all, we didn’t know there were glaciers in Indonesia (albeit in the Papuan Highlands), of all places. Now we hear of them dying.

Lonnie Thompson spent years preparing for his expedition to the remote, mist-shrouded mountains of eastern Indonesia, hoping to chronicle the affect of global warming on the last remaining glacier in the Pacific. Hes worried he got there too late.Even as he pitched his tent on top of Puncak Jaya, the ice was melting beneath him.The 3-mile- 4,884-meter- high glacier was pounded by rain every afternoon during the teams 13-day trip, something the American scientist has never encountered in three decades of drilling ice cores. He lay awake at night listening to the water gushing beneath him.By the time they were ready to head home, ice around their sheltered campsite had melted a staggering 12 inches 30 centimeters.”These glaciers are dying,” said Thompson, one of the worlds most accomplished glaciologists. “Before I was thinking they had a few decades, but now Id say were looking at years.”

Read more at independentmail.com: AP News.

(Thanks @izreloaded)