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KILIMANJARO’S FAMED SNOW IS FAST MELTING INTO HISTORY

The snow cap of Mount Kilimanjaro, famed in literature and beloved by tourists, appeared 11,000 years ago, but it will be gone in two decades, according to researchers who say the ice fields on Africa’s highest mountain shrank by 80 percent in the past century.

Lonnie Thompson of Ohio University said measurements show that the oldest ice layers on the mountain were deposited during an extremely wet period starting about 11,700 years ago.

But a temperature rise in recent years is eroding the blocks of ice that gave Kilimanjaro its distinctive white cap. The ice has retreated more than 2 meters (6 feet) in the past two years, he said.

“The ice will be gone by about 2020,” said Thompson, the first author of a study appearing Friday in the journal Science. The diminishing ice already has reduced the amount of water in some Tanzanian rivers, and the government fears that when Kilimanjaro is bald of snow the tourists will stop coming.

“Kilimanjaro is the No.1 foreign currency earner for the government of Tanzania,” said Thompson. “It has its own international airport for some 20,000 tourists every year. The question is how many will come if there are no ice fields on the mountain.”

Water from the mountain supplies villages and hospitals, and already some suffering, said Thompson.

An extremely wet period evidence in the ice corings matches independent studies that showed that about 11,000 years ago the lakes in Africa extended across vast areas of the continent.

THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, Oct. 18, 2002