FEATURE ARTICLE
The Shrinking Glaciers of Kilimanjaro: Can Global Warming Be Blamed?
The Kibo ice cap, a "poster child" of global climate change, is being starved of snowfall and depleted by solar radiation
Phillip W. Mote
High-altitude glaciers in the tropics are melting too; the area of the ice cap atop Kilimanjaro in tropical East Africa has shrunk more than 90 percent in a century and become a global-warming poster child. But Mote and Kaser say that the Kilimanjaro glaciers are not melting but sublimating—turning straight to vapor—under the direct action of solar radiation at temperatures that remain below freezing. Whatever is happening elsewhere, Kilimanjaro's ice seems not to be succumbing to climate change.
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Figure 9. Sculpted finger-like features called “penitentes” are a striking feature on the Kibo ice cap, providing further evidence that warming is not at work there. Solar radiation and sublimation tend to create such features; infrared radiation and sensible-heat transfer smooth them. Nicolas Cullen of the University of Otago in New Zealand is silhouetted in this photograph taken by Georg Kaser during a recent field season.
Photograph courtesy of Georg Kaser.