Yahoo News 2 Nov 09;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The snows capping Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest peak, are shrinking rapidly and could vanish altogether in 20 years, most likely due to global warming, a US study published Monday said.
The ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 1912 was 85 percent smaller by 2007, and since 2000 the existing ice sheet has shrunk by 26 percent, the paleoclimatologists said.
The findings point to the rise in global temperatures as the most likely cause of the ice loss. Changes in cloudiness and precipitation may have also played a smaller, less important role, especially in recent decades, they added.
"This is the first time researchers have calculated the volume of ice lost from the mountain's ice fields," said study co-author Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University,
"If you look at the percentage of volume lost since 2000 versus the percentage of area lost as the ice fields shrink, the numbers are very close," he said in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
While the yearly loss of the mountain glaciers is most apparent from the retreat of their margins, Thompson said an equally troubling effect is the thinning of the ice fields from the surface.
The summits of both the Northern and Southern Ice Fields atop Kilimanjaro have thinned by 1.9 meters (6.2 feet) and 5.1 meters (16.7 feet) respectively. The smaller Furtwangler Glacier, which was melting and water-saturated in 2000 when it was drilled, has thinned as much as 50 percent between 2000 and 2009, the study said.
"It has lost half of its thickness," Thompson said. "In the future, there will be a year when Furtwangler is present and by the next year, it will have disappeared. The whole thing will be gone."
The scientists said they found no evidence of sustained melting anywhere else in the ice core samples they extracted, which date back 11,700 years.
They said their findings show that current climate conditions over Mount Kilimanjaro are unique over the last 11 millennia.
Snow cap disappearing from Mount Kilimanjaro
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press Yahoo News 3 Nov 09;
WASHINGTON – The snows of Kilimanjaro may soon be gone. The African mountain's white peak — made famous by writer Ernest Hemingway — is rapidly melting, researchers report.
Some 85 percent of the ice that made up the mountaintop glaciers in 1912 was gone by 2007, researchers led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
And more than a quarter of the ice present in 2000 was gone by 2007.
If current conditions continue "the ice fields atop Kilimanjaro will not endure," the researchers said.
The Kilimanjaro glaciers are both shrinking, as the ice at their edges melts, and thinning, the researchers found.
Similar changes are being reported at Mount Kenya and the Rwenzori Mountains in Africa and at glaciers in South America and the Himalayas.
"The fact that so many glaciers throughout the tropics and subtropics are showing similar responses suggests an underlying common cause," Thompson said in a statement. "The increase of Earth's near surface temperatures, coupled with even greater increases in the mid- to upper-tropical troposphere, as documented in recent decades, would at least partially explain" the observations.
Changes in cloudiness and snowfall may also be involved, though they appear less important, according to the study.
On Kilimanjaro, the researchers said, the northern ice field thinned by 6.2 feet (1.9 meters) and the southern ice field by 16.7 feet (5.1 meters) between 2000 and 2007.
Researchers compared the current area covered by the glaciers with maps of the glaciers based on photographs taken in 1912 and 1953 and satellite images from 1976 and 1989.
The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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PNAS: http://www.pnas.org
Kilimanjaro's ice may disappear by 2033
Katrina Manson, Reuters 2 Nov 09;
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - The ice on Africa's highest mountain could vanish in 13 to 24 years, a fate also awaiting the continent's other glaciers, a study said Monday.
U.S.-based researchers Lonnie Thompson and colleagues said glaciers on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania's snow-capped volcano which attracts 40,000 visitors a year, could disappear.
"There is a strong likelihood that the ice fields will disappear within a decade or two if current conditions persist," said the study, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.
The research blames warmer temperatures due to climate change and drier, less cloudy conditions than in the past.
"The climatological conditions currently driving the loss of Kilimanjaro's ice fields are clearly unique within an 11,700-year perspective," said the study, adding that the mountain lost 26 percent of its ice cover between 2000 and 2007.
At 5,896 meters high, Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the east African country's top tourism draws, offering tourists a taste of the tropical and the glacial within a five-day climb.
It brings in an estimated $50 million a year. Tourism is the leading foreign exchange earner in the poor country, earning $1.22 billion in 2008.
"The loss of the ice fields will have a negative impact on tourism in tropical east Africa," said Thompson in an email to Reuters.
Home to elephant, leopard and buffalo, as well as expansive views of the Rift Valley, the mountain known as "the roof of Africa" was first scaled by a European, Hans Meyer, 120 years ago. While its Kibo peak rises above the clouds, it can be reached with little more than a walking stick and some puff.
"The loss of the glaciers is an indicator of climate change under way in this region which impacts not only the glaciers on the summit but the weather patterns that bring rainfall to the lower slopes," said Thompson.
(Editing by David Clarke)
