Climate change and Mt. Kilimanjaro

Mt. Kilimanjaro is an inactive stratovolcano in north-eastern Tanzania rising 4,600 m from its base. It is the highest mountain in Africa at 5,895 meters. Mt. Kilimanjaro is providing a dramatic view of the surrounding plains and has three volcanic cones namely, Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira.

The highest point on Kilimanjaro is Uhuru Peak, on the volcano Kibo 5,895 metres. The top of Kibo is a 1.5 mile wide crater. Two other peaks are also extinct volcanoes: Mawenzi (5,149 m, 16,890 ft), the third highest peak in Africa (after Mount Kenya) and Shira (3,962 m, 13,000 ft) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilimanjaro).

The majority of the people inhabiting the Kilimanjaro region are the Bantu-speaking Chagga, the Pare, Kahe, and Mbugu. The Kilimanjaro slopes have several vegetation zones, ranging from the semiarid scrub on the plateau around the mountain, the fertile southern slopes, dense forests and open moorlands, alpine deserts and moss and lichen groupings (http://library.thinkquest.org/16645/the_land/kili_tp.shtml). The Kilimanjaro region is one of the leading Tanzanian producers of coffee, barley, wheat, sage, sisal, maize, beans, bananas, wattle bark, cotton, pyrethrum and potatoes.

Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the few places in the world where ice and snow can be found on the equator. Its fast-melting glaciers symbolise the fact that climate change may be felt first and hardest by the environment and people of Africa.

But due to climate change resulted from global warming glaciers are disappearing around the world in which Mount Kilimanjaro provides a clear example of this impact of climate change. While the volcano appears to be dormant on the inside, events on top of the mountain draw global attention. The top of the mountain has seen a retreat of the most recent covering of glaciers, with the most recent ice cap volume dropping by more than 80%. In 2002, a study led by Ohio State University ice core paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson predicted that ice on top of Africa's tallest peak would be gone between 2015 and 2020. In 2007, a team of Austrian scientists from University of Innsbruck predicted that the plateau ice cap will be gone by 2040, but some ice on the slope will remain longer due to local weather conditions. A comparison of ice core records suggests conditions today are returning to those of 11,000 years ago.

A study by Philip Mote of the University of Washington in the United States and Georg Kaser of the University of Innsbruck in Austria concludes that the shrinking of Kilimanjaro's ice cap is not directly due to rising temperature but rather to decreased precipitation. [8] In May 2008 The Tanzanian Minister for Natural Resources, Ms Shamsa Mwangunga, that there were indications that snow cover on the mountain was actually increasing.[9] As of January 2006, the Western Breach route has been closed by the Tanzanian government following a rockslide that killed four people at Arrow Glacier Camp.[citation needed] The rockslide is believed to have been caused by frost action in an area that is no longer permanently frozen.

According to Hardy, forest reduction in the areas surrounding Mt. Kilimanjaro and not global warming, might be the strongest human influence on glacial recession. Clearing for agriculture and forest fires often caused by honey collectors trying to smoke bees out of their hives have greatly reduced the surrounding forests. The loss of foliage causes less moisture to be pumped into the atmosphere, leading to reduced cloud cover and precipitation and increased solar radiation and glacial evaporation.

Along with a higher risk of evaporation, a drop in precipitation also makes for a dark glacial surface, made up of old, dirty snow. A darker glacial surface absorbs more solar radiation than fresh, white snow (like a blacktop playground baking in the sun).

According to Douglas R. Hardy, a climatologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who monitored Kilimanjaro's glaciers from mountaintop weather stations since 2000, the sad reality is that the loss of Kilimanjaro's glaciers probably has to affect the local economy. Climate change is already having an impact on habitats critical to the survival of wildlife in places around the globe (http://www.abercrombiekent.com).

The disappearing glaciers of Kilimanjaro are attracting broad interest. Less conspicuous but ecologically far more significant is the associated increase of frequency and intensity of fires on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, which leads to a downward shift of the upper forest line by several hundred meters as a result of a drier (warmer) climate since the last century. In contrast to common belief, global warming does not necessarily cause upward migration of plants and animals
(http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118710788/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0). Here, it is shown that on Kilimanjaro the opposite trend is under way, with consequences more harmful than those due to the loss of the showy ice cap of Africa's highest mountain.