The African glacier retreat very strong
By Monika Seynsche
Climate .- Ernest Hemingway made his main character, Harry even from
his sickbed on the seemingly endless white expanses look at the summit
of Kilimanjaro. Since then "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" was released,
however, more than 70 years have passed, and the highest mountain in
Africa has changed dramatically.
Raymond Bradley is a man around 60 with glasses, a beige suit and
white beard. He bends over his laptop and shows on the display.
Even if you do not see it on the radio could, but he wanted to show
this photo, says climate researcher at the University of
Massachusetts. We see a man standing on the ice, holding the dried and
bleached corpse of an animal of some size dog in her arms. A bush hog.
"Using disappears, the ice and gives everything free, which was
previously included. This bush pig, for example, we have radiocarbon
dated. It's more than 100 years old. We know that the ice on which we
are now, more than one century, emerged. "
For ten years travel Raymond Bradley and his colleagues examined
regularly to East Africa to the ice fields of Kilimanjaro.
"In the first seven or eight years, the ice around one and a half feet
become thinner. In the last three years it has then another two and a
half yards lost. This means that in the ten years that we have
examined the Kilimanjaro are four m ice thickness has been lost. This
is really a lot for such a short period of time! Overall, the ice is
only 50 feet thick, there are a lot of loss of four yards. "
It is similar to the few other glaciers of East Africa, the candidate
tells Prince Rainer of the University of Innsbruck.
Mount Kenya is an eroded volcanic cone with height of 5200 meters and
around this volcano eroded stump there are some very small glaciers in
the high altitude 4500-4900 meters. The largest of the glacier is the
Lewis glacier on which we work. "
Ten acres of this glacier is still large. Since 1934 he has, the
investigations of the Innsbruck researchers said, lost 80 percent of
its area. However, this massive loss of ice is probably not, as in the
Alps, due to rising air temperatures, says Prince Rainer.
"So you can get in the tropical ice, you have to high altitude, where
the temperature is very low. And after the annual course of air
temperature in the tropics indeed is very consistent actually, so
there's really no seasonal temperature fluctuations in the tropics,
the is also at great height to get these glaciers are already in
regions where it is very cold. And there are simply very high in the
tropics throughout the year fluctuations in the humidity is also the
availability of moisture in the main influence on the glacier and to
melt. "
And exactly at this moisture is lacking for many years in East Africa.
There is very little to no snow and it has two serious consequences.
Firstly, the glaciers simply lack the extra mass and on the other
hand, they lack the white color of fresh snow. By dust and dirt, they
get darker, thereby absorb more solar heat and melt even faster. But
why is less snow?
"That seems to be related to the atmospheric circulation over the
Indian Ocean, with the so-called Indian Ocean dipole. That's a
circulation pattern that has brought at least the past ten years, very
little rain and snow to East Africa.'s Why we see the terrible drought
in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. "
Whether the changes have nothing to do with the Indian Ocean to global
climate change, researchers know it yet. Raymond Bradley, however,
considers it unlikely that the glaciers of East Africa is not alone in
the world respond to climate change
