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2 years ago
Global warming could end Mt Kilimanjaro snow
THE snows capping Mt Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak, are shrinking rapidly and could vanish altogether in 20 years, most likely due to global warming, a US study said.
The ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 1912 was 85 per cent smaller by 2007, and since 2000 the existing ice sheet has shrunk by 26 per cent, 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,” study co-author Lonnie Thompson said.
Mr Thompson is the 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 journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
