Mount Kilimanjaro in June 2001 (left) and July 2009 (right).
A new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences details the rapid melting of the storied Snows of Kilimanjaro — made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same name.
The journal Nature reports:
The snows of Kilimanjaro are rapidly disappearing and will be gone by 2033, predicts the most detailed analysis yet of the iconic glaciers gracing Africa’s highest peak.
Since 1912, when aerial photographers documented Kilimanjaro’s glaciers, the mountain’s ice fields have shrunk around 85% in area, decreasing from 12 square kilometres in size to just 1.85 square kilometres. That pace seems to be accelerating, as the glaciers shrunk 26% in area between 2000 and 2007.
Interestingly, it was in 2007 that the Global Warming Deniers argued that glaciers in Kilimanjaro were actually increasing.
Source: L. G. Thompson, H. H. Brechera, E. Mosley-Thompsona, D. R. Hardyd, and B. G. Marka, “Glacier loss on Kilimanjaro continues unabated” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0906029106
