-Caveat Lector-
February 19, 2001
A Message in Eroding Glacial Ice: Humans Are Turning Up the Heat
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The icecap atop Mount Kilimanjaro, which for thousands of years
has floated like a cool beacon over the shimmering plain of
Tanzania, is retreating at such a pace that it will disappear in
less than 15 years, according to new studies.
The vanishing of the seemingly perpetual snows of Kilimanjaro
that inspired Ernest Hemingway, echoed by similar trends on
ice-capped peaks from Peru to Tibet, is one of the clearest signs
that a global warming trend in the last 50 years may have
exceeded typical climate shifts and is at least partly caused by
gases released by human activities, a variety of scientists say.
Measurements taken over the last year on Kilimanjaro show that
its glaciers are not only retreating but also rapidly thinning,
with one spot having lost a yard of thickness since last
February, said Dr. Lonnie G. Thompson, a senior research
scientist at the Byrd Polar Research Center of Ohio State
University.
Altogether, he said, the mountain has lost 82 percent of the
icecap it had when it was first carefully surveyed, in 1912.
Given that the retreat started a century ago, Dr. Thompson said,
it is likely that some natural changes were affecting the glacier
before it felt any effect from the large, recent rise in carbon
dioxide and other heat- trapping greenhouse gases from
smokestacks and tailpipes. And, he noted, glaciers have grown and
retreated in pulses for tens of thousands of years.
But the pace of change measured now goes beyond anything in
recent centuries.
"There may be a natural part of it, but there's something else
being superimposed on top of it," Dr. Thompson said. "And it
matches so many other lines of evidence of warming. Whether
you're talking about bore- hole temperatures, shrinking Arctic
sea ice, or glaciers, they're telling the same story."
Dr. Thompson presented the fresh data yesterday at the annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science in San Francisco.
Other recent reports of changes under way in the natural world,
like gaps in sea ice at the North Pole or shifts in animal
populations, can still be ascribed to other factors, many
scientists say, but many add that having such a rapid erosion of
glaciers in so many places is harder to explain except by global
warming.
The retreat of mountain glaciers has been seen from Montana to
Mount Everest to the Swiss Alps. In the Alps, scientists have
estimated that by 2025 glaciers will have lost 90 percent of the
volume of ice that was there a century ago. (Only Scandinavia
seems to be bucking the trend, apparently because shifting storm
tracks in Europe are dumping more snow there.)
But the melting is generally quickest in and near the tropics,
Dr. Thompson said, with some ancient glaciers in the Andes — and
the ice on Kilimanjaro — melting fastest of all.
Separate studies of air temperature in the tropics, made using
high- flying balloons, have shown a steady rise of about 15 feet
a year in the altitude at which air routinely stays below the
freezing point. Dr. Thompson said that other changes could also
be contributing to the glacial shrinkage, but the rising warm
zone is probably the biggest influence.
Trying to stay ahead of the widespread melting, Dr. Thompson and
a team of scientists have been hurriedly traveling around the
tropics to extract cores of ice from a variety of glaciers
containing a record of thousands of years of climate shifts. The
data may help predict future trends.
The four-inch-thick ice cylinders are being stored in a
deep-frozen archive at Ohio State, he said, so that as new
technologies are developed for reading chemical clues in bubbles
and water in ancient ice, there will still be something to
examine.
The sad fact, he said, is that in a matter of years, anyone
wanting to study the glaciers of Africa or Peru will probably
have to travel to Columbus, Ohio, to do so.
Dr. Richard B. Alley, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania
State University, said the melting trend and the link — at least
partly — to human influence is "depressing," not only because of
the loss of data but also because of the remarkable changes under
way to such familiar landscapes.
"What is a snowcap worth to us?" he said. "I don't know about
you, but I like the snows of Kilimanjaro."
The accelerating loss of mountain glaciers is also described in a
scientific report on the impact of global warming, which is being
released today in Geneva by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, an influential network of scientists advising
world governments under the auspices of the United Nations. The
melting is likely to threaten water supplies in places like Peru
and Nepal, the report says, and could also lead to devastating
flash floods.
Kilimanjaro, the highest point in Africa, may provide the most
vivid image of the change in glaciers, but, Dr. Thompson said,
the rate of retreat is far faster along the spine of the Andes,
and the consequences more significant. For 25 years, he has been
tracking a particular Peruvian glacier, Qori Kalis, where the
pace of shrinkage has accelerated enormously just in the last
three years.
>From 1998 to 2000, the glacier pulled back 508 feet a year, he
said. "That's 33 times faster than the rate in the first
measurement period," he said, referring to a study from 1963 to
1978.
In the short run, this means the hydroelectric dams and
reservoirs downstream will be flush with water, he said, but in
the long run the source will run dry.
"The whole country right now, for its hydropower, is cashing in
on a bank account that was built up over thousands of years but
isn't being replenished," he said.
Once that is gone, he added, chances are that the communities
will have to turn to oil or coal for power, adding even more
greenhouse gases to the air.
The changes in the character of Kilimanjaro are registering
beyond the ranks of climate scientists. People in the tourism
business around the mountain and surrounding national park are
worried that visitors will no longer be drawn to the peak once it
has lost its glimmering cap.
Dr. Douglas R. Hardy, a geologist at the University of
Massachusetts, returned from Kilimanjaro last Thursday with the
first yearlong record of weather data collected by a probe placed
near the summit.
Just before he left, he had a long conversation with the chief
ranger of Kilimanjaro National Park, who expressed deep concern
about the trend. "That mountain is the most mystical, magical
draw to people's imagination," Dr. Hardy said. "Once the ice
disappears, it's going to be a very different place."
And the melting continues. When Dr. Hardy climbed the mountain to
retrieve the data, he discovered that the weather instruments,
erected on a tall pole, had fallen over because the ice around
the base was gone.
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