Study: Kilimanjaro may become snowless by 2022

The snows of Kilimanjaro, famous for an Ernest Hemingway's short story of the same name, could disappear by 2022, according to a new study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For the first time in almost 12,000 years, based on ice-core analysis, Africa's highest peak probably will be ice-free as early as 2022 or as late as 2033, said glaciologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, who led the study.


Flamingoes fly in Amboseli National Park near Mount Kilimanjaro, with an elevation of 5,895 meters (19,340 ft), March 22, 2007.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
"Of the ice cover present in 1912," Thompson and his colleagues write in the paper, "85 percent has disappeared and 26 percent of that present in 2000 is now gone."

However, researchers studying the mountaintop, including those involved in this study, differ in their conclusions on how much of the melting could result from human activity or other climatological influences.

Some studies have suggested the ice loss is due primarily to what some see as local factors: less snowfall and more sublimation -- a process that turns ice directly into water vapor at below freezing temperatures.

The new study appears to strengthen the argument that global warming is to blame in addition to sublimation.

"This is a very thorough documentation of the changes in the Kilimanjaro glaciers," says Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who was not part of the study. Trenberth says he has no doubt "that the glaciers are retreating and have continued to retreat."

The "snows of Kilimanjaro" were made famous in the Ernest Hemingway short story of that name in 1938, in which the main character notices "as wide as all the world, great, high and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro."

Source:Xinhua/Agencies