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Shrinking of Mt. Kilimanjaro’s Ice Cap Not Due to Global Warming: Study
June 12, 2007 at 7:59 PM
Environmental Health
"There are dozens, if not hundreds, of photos of midlatitude glaciers you could show where there is absolutely no question that they are declining in response to the warming atmosphere," said climatologist Philip Mote, a University of Washington research scientist.
Mote and Georg Kaser, a glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, write in their study in the journal American Scientist, that the decline in Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice has been going on for more than a century and that most of it occurred before 1953.
Evidence of atmospheric warming there before 1970 is inconclusive. As such, using the mountain as a “poster child” for climate change is inaccurate, they say.
According to Mote, in the tropics – particularly on Mt. Kilimanjaro – processes very different from those that have diminished glacial ice in temperate regions closer to the poles are at work.
The ice decline is primarily due to complex interacting factors, including the vertical shape of the ice's edge, which allows it to shrink but not expand.
They also cite decreased snowfall, which reduces ice buildup and determines how much energy the ice absorbs – because the whiteness of new snow reflects more sunlight, the lack of new snow allows the ice to absorb more of the sun's energy, for this shrinkage.
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