{"id":14156,"date":"2026-05-31T12:50:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T12:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=14156"},"modified":"2026-05-31T12:50:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T12:50:25","slug":"this-3d-model-captures-a-rare-tropical-glacier-before-its-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=14156","title":{"rendered":"This 3D model captures a rare tropical glacier before it\u2019s gone"},"content":{"rendered":"


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When Klaus Thymann flew nearly 15,000 feet up into Indonesia\u2019s remote highlands last November, he was racing to document ice that few people realize exists. Near the summit of Puncak Jaya, the country\u2019s highest mountain, some of the world\u2019s last tropical glaciers are rapidly disappearing.<\/p>\n

[Photo: Klaus Thymann]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe stand now to lose these glaciers within a decade,\u201d says Thymann, an explorer, photographer, and scientist who spent days creating a detailed 3D model of the remaining ice.<\/p>\n

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[Image: Project Pressure]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Few outsiders ever see the glaciers. The mountains sit in a rebel-held area in Central Papua Province, on the island of New Guinea, Indonesia’s easternmost territory. It’s so dangerous there that Indonesia has banned hiking to the peaks. The U.S. State Department warns Americans against travel<\/a> to the region because of civil unrest (one of the suggestions, if someone takes the risk<\/a>: Appoint a family member as a point of contact in case you\u2019re taken hostage).<\/p>\n

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To reach the glaciers, Thymann had to wait for days for the conditions to be right for a helicopter to fly up the mountain. When he arrived, along with guides and armed guards, he saw one of the rare glaciers\u2014not far from humid rainforests and beaches, but at an altitude so high that the area has historically stayed below freezing. Now, the ice is melting quickly because of climate change, an accelerated version of the process that’s happening to glaciers around the world.<\/p>\n

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[Photo: Klaus Thymann]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Between 1980 and 2024, as the planet heated up, the glaciers in the area lost 97% of their ice cover. They once sprawled over an area about twice the size of Central Park. By 2024, the total area was smaller than Grand Central Station. Four out of the original six glaciers have disappeared. The last two are expected to disappear by 2030.<\/p>\n

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[Photo: Klaus Thymann]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thymann used drones to photograph the mountain \u201cfrom every conceivable angle,\u201d he says, later using software to stitch together overlapping images to create a 3D model of the site and one of the glaciers, called the East Northwall Firn, which has split into three parts as it melts. Because of heavy cloud cover in the area\u2014it rains 300 days a year\u2014it\u2019s difficult to accurately map the glacier using satellite images. Geolocation technology from a company called Trimble helped map the site in centimeter-level detail. Thymann, who has a nonprofit called Project Pressure<\/a> that uses art, science, and activism to track environmental change, previously used a similar process to document other tropical ice in South America and East Africa.<\/p>\n

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[Photo: Klaus Thymann]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The data from the Indonesian mountain is open source so scientists can use it to track the ecosystem as it changes. But it\u2019s also a record of an important cultural site. \u201cFor locals, they\u2019re called the \u2018eternity\u2019 glaciers,\u201d says Thymann. \u201cNow they\u2019re becoming extinct. Maybe it\u2019s a good thing for future generations to have a visual reference of what they look like.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Klaus Thymann flew nearly 15,000 feet up into Indonesia\u2019s remote highlands last November, he was racing to document ice that few people realize exists. Near the summit of Puncak Jaya, the country\u2019s highest mountain, some of the world\u2019s last tropical glaciers are rapidly disappearing. [Photo: Klaus Thymann] \u201cWe stand now to lose these glaciers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brand-spotlights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}