Africa's Famed Rwenzori Glaciers Melting Rapidly - Down 60% In Mass Since 1910

[hatrack]

KAMPALA — Climate change is melting a legendary ice field in equatorial Africa and may soon thaw it out completely, threatening fresh water supplies to hundreds of thousands of people, a climate expert said on Thursday. The fabled, snow-capped Rwenzori mountains -- dubbed the "Mountains of the Moon" in travel brochures -- form part of the Uganda/Democratic Republic of the Congo border and are one of Uganda's top tourist destinations.

But warmer temperatures are melting the glaciers sitting on their peaks, with some scientists predicting the ice could be gone within two to three decades. "Definitely, the glaciers are decreasing," James Magezi-Akiiki, a climate change specialist at Uganda's environment ministry told Reuters. "They have already decreased by 60 percent since 1910. If temperatures keep going up as they have, there's a high chance of them disappearing."

Scientists say tropical glaciers like the snowy peaks of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa's highest mountain, are especially sensitive to climate change. "The same thing is happening to Kilimanjaro...It's gone from white to brown," Magezi-Akiiki said. A study in 2002 showed Kilimanjaro to have lost more than 80 percent of its ice cap in the past 100 years, reducing water supplies to people living around it.

Two U.N. reports coinciding with a conference on climate change in Kenya this week warned of disastrous consequences for Africa from global warming caused by CO2 emissions. "Climate change threatens to intensify water insecurity on an unparalleled scale," the U.N. Human Development Report said. Glaciers are often a crucial store of fresh water. "The streams originating from the Rwenzori glaciers would disappear if they melt," said Magezi-Akiiki. "And during the dry season they are the only source of water."

EDIT

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=11630

[pk_du]

1. Good graphics of the problem here

http://www.uibk.ac.at/geographie/forschung/klima-eis/tropic/research/rwenzori/

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2. Well, we know that it's going to happen. In which case...

I wonder when? Using 60% since 1910 as a starting point, a crude linear estimate would put the disappearance at 2070. That's got to be optimistic, since glacial disappearance has been accelerating rapidly in recent years.

[hatrack]

3. Of course, it might not be linear . . .

Perhaps a touch more, shall we say, logarithmic.

[phantom power]

4. Oh, absolutely. Merely a question of how *much* worse than linear.

I'm guessing it will be closer to 20 years than 75.