SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO TO "DISAPPEAR IN 20 YEARS"

By Richard Alleyne,
Science Correspondent
03 Nov 2009

The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro will have disappeared within two decades because of global warming, claim scientists, changing forever one of the world's most beautiful landscapes.

More than 85 per cent of the ice that covered the three peaks of Africa's highest mountain has disappeared in the last 100 years and the rest is melting at such a rate it will be gone by 2030. The disappearance of the ice-cap will alter one of the world's most arresting images - elephants and giraffes trekking across the shimmering Tanzanian plains with the ice-capped peaks of the mountain in the distance.

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The sight is so striking that it inspired the title of one of Ernest Hemingway's most famous stories, the Snows of Kilimanjaro. Researchers made the prediction after drilling holes in the remaining ice-core on top of the 19,000 ft high mountain.

Their work shows that 85 percent of the ice that covered the mountain in 1912 had been lost by 2000.Since then the rate of melting has increased and a further 26 per cent of the ice has now disappeared.

Scientists at the University of Ohio claim the reason behind the loss is global warming combined with reduced snowfall brought on by climate change.
Their research shows that the melting is the worst in more than 11,000 years, when the ice was formed and is uncovering layers of dust not seen for thousands of years.
It has even unlocked radioactive fallout from the American 1951-52 "Ivy" atomic tests that were embedded in the ice.

Even 4,200 years ago, a drought that lasted about 300 years and left a one inch layer of dust was not accompanied by any evidence of melting suggesting the climate at the summit was stable.

Professor of earth sciences Lonnie Thompson said: "This is the first time researchers have calculated the volume of ice lost from the mountain's ice fields."
He said that the increase in temperatures especially in the mid to upper atmosphere would most likely be the "underlying cause".

Scientists warned other glaciers, on Mount Kenya, the Rwenzori Mountains in Africa, as well as tropical glaciers high in the South American Andes and in the Himalayas, are suffering the same fate.

The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.