The treasured 'eternal snow' on this tropical island is about to disappear forever

Image source, Project Pressure/Klaus TymannImage caption, Only small patches of snow remain on Papua's Sudirman RangeByAbraham UtamaBBC IndonesiaThe mountains of Papua are not far from the equator, but they've been topped with "eternal snow" for centuries.The peaks in this Indonesian region on the world's second-largest island, just north of Australia, have offered scientists countless insights into the Earth's climate history.They're also the epicentre of the spiritual universe for many Papuans - a Mecca or a Vatican, as one activist puts it.But now, nearly all the snow is gone.A century ago, the 300km (190-mile) stretch of the Sudirman Range had snow and permanent ice on all four of its major peaks.But now there are only small areas around Puncak Jaya, also known as Carstensz Pyramid, with any snow at all. These are expected to entirely disappear in a year or two.Glacier cover around the peak has shrunk from nearly 1,900 hectares (4,700 acres) in the 19th Century to about 16 hectares (40 acres) today. Almost entire glaciers have vanished within a human lifetime."There is a profound unfairness in this," says Marie Šabacká, a Czech glacier ecologist who travelled to Puncak Jaya las...