American Association for the Advancement of Science: http://www.aaas.org/ By Clive Cookson in San Francisco Published: February 19 2001 21:35GMT | Last Updated: February 19 2001 21:57GMT The first victims of global warming will be the glaciers and ice caps on the highest mountains of Africa and tropical South America, a leading glaciologist has warned. Lonnie Thompson, a geology professor at Ohio State University, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science that tropical glaciers were retreating at an accelerating pace and most would have disappeared within 15 years. "These glaciers are much like the canaries once used in coal mines," he said. "They are an indicator of massive changes taking place and a response to the changes in climate in the tropics." Prof Thomson reported that at least one-third of the huge ice field on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania had melted in the last dozen years and 82 per cent had disappeared since it was first mapped in 1912. "At this rate all of the ice will be gone between 2010 and 2020 - and that is probably a conservative estimate," he said. In the Peruvian Andes, the Quelccaya ice cap has shrunk by more than 20 per cent since 1963. The Qori Kalis glacier flowing from the ice cap is retreating by an astonishing 155 metres per year - 30 times more rapidly than during the period 1963 to 1978. Melting ice is forming a large new lake in front of the glacier and bare earth has been exposed for the first time in thousands of years. Prof Thompson, who is one of the world's leading glaciologists, drilled his first ice core from Quelccaya in 1976. "I fully expect to be able to be able to return there in a dozen years or so and see the marks on the rock where our drill bit punched through the ice," he said. If so, an ice cap that was 154 metres thick at that point will have vanished in less than 40 years. As well as signalling global climate change, these losses have local implications, Prof Thompson said. Kilimanjaro may stop attracting thousands of tourists to Tanzania if it is no longer capped with ice. And the loss of Quelccaya and similar Andean ice fields - "frozen reservoirs" - threatens water resources for hydroelectric power, crop irrigation and municipal supplies. _______________________________________________ CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
