(CNN) -- The ice and snow that cap majestic Mount Kilimanjaro in
Tanzania are vanishing before our eyes.
If current conditions persist, climate change experts say,
Kilimanjaro's world-renowned glaciers, which have covered Africa's
highest peak for centuries, will be gone within the next two decades.
"In a very real sense, these glaciers are being decapitated from the
surface down," said Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at
Ohio State University. Thompson is co-author of a study on Kilimanjaro
published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
The study's authors blame the disappearing ice on increases in global
temperatures and diminished snowfall at Kilimanjaro's summit.
Previous studies of Kilimanjaro's glaciers have relied on aerial
photographs to measure the rate of the retreating ice. For this new
survey, scientists climbed the mountain and drilled deep into the
glaciers to measure the volume of the ice fields atop the 19,331-foot
(5,892-meter) peak.
The ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 2007 was 85 percent smaller
than the one that covered its plateau in 1912, paleoclimatologists
explained in the study.
The mountain's ice cover shrank about 1 percent a year from 1912 to
1953, a rate that has accelerated in recent years. From 1989 to 2007,
that rate jumped to 2.5 percent a year. Since 2000, the plateau's
three remaining ice fields have shrunk by 26 percent, scientists
found.
Using 110 "porters," or local residents, they carried 6 tons of
equipment to the mountain's plateau. Battling temperatures as low as
35 degrees below zero, and with very little oxygen, Thompson and his
crew lived atop Kilimanjaro for nearly two months, drilling and
collecting core ice samples buried thousands of feet below the
glaciers' surface.
The new data shows that both the Northern and Southern ice fields atop
Kilimanjaro have thinned dramatically in recent years, while the
smaller Furtwangler Glacier shrank as much as 50 percent between 2000
and 2009.
As the glaciers break up into smaller pieces, more of the darker
surface of the crater is exposed. This causes temperatures to rise on
the mountain and accelerates the melting of the ice, scientists say.
"The shrinkage and ultimate disappearance of these glaciers will
create tremendous ecological and social problems in the near future,"
said Doug Hardy, senior research fellow in the Climate Systems
Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Hardy
contributed research to the new study.
"The Kilimanjaro glaciers are indicators for a larger-scale process,"
Thompson said. "It's not just Kilimanjaro, it's every tropical glacier
in Africa, in the tropical Andes of South America, it's the glaciers
in New Guinea. We are losing all those glaciers in today's world."
A snowless Mount Kilimanjaro also could have economic effects.
Kilimanjaro is a tourist attraction and a crucial revenue generator
for Tanzania, one of the world's poorest counties. A study published
by the Overseas Development Institute in January estimated that 35,000
to 40,000 people visit Kilimanjaro every year, spending almost $50
million annually in the country.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/11/02/kilimanjaro.glaciers/index...
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ba ba booie writes:
""The shrinkage and ultimate disappearance of these glaciers will
create tremendous ecological and social problems in the near future,"
said Doug Hardy, senior research fellow in the Climate Systems
Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Hardy
contributed research to the new study.
"
That is kinda scary
I wonder what kind of social problem it will cause?
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