BLEAK FUTURE
No snow on Kilimanjaro in 20 yrs
Washington: The snow capping Mount Kilimanjaro,Africas tallest peak,is shrinking rapidly and could vanish altogether in 20 years,most likely due to global warming,a US study published on Monday said.
The ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 1912 was 85% smaller by 2007,and since 2000 the existing ice sheet has shrunk by 26%,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 mountains 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.
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 1.9m and 5.1m respectively.The smaller Furtwangler Glacier,which was melting and water-saturated in 2000 when it was drilled,has thinned as much as 50% 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.
They said their findings show that current climate conditions over Mount Kilimanjaro are unique over the last 11 millennia.AFP
Vista del Kilimanjaro
Vista del glaciar del Kilimanjaro
Científicos de la Universidad de Ohio dieron a conocer su predicción sobre el hielo en la cumbre del Kilimanjaro, la montaña más alta de África, ubicada al norte de Tanzania.

Debido a los cambios climáticos, el hielo que estaba presente en la montaña durante 1912 se redujo gradualmente alrededor del 85% hasta 2000, y del 26% hasta 2007. Esta fue la primera vez que se midió el volúmen de hielo en el Kilimanjaro, gracias al estudio dirigido por Lonnie Thompson, profesor de la Universidad de Ohio.



Según Thomson el derretimiento de los graciares afectará negativamente al turismo, sector clave en la economía de Tanzania. Las visitas al Kilimanjaro arrojan una fuente de ingresos de alrededor de 50 millones de dólares al año.

Según los científicos, los cambios en la nubosidad y el clima podrían ser factores en la retirada del hielo, especialmente durante las últimas décadas. Estas conclusiones fueron publicadas por primera vez en la revista de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Estados Unidos (NAS, por sus siglas en inglés) el lunes.