Word: kilimanjaro
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...surface, which would cause some melting. But most of the ice loss, he suggests, is due to sublimation - that is, ice turning directly into water vapor with no intermediate step. That tends to happen when temperatures are cold and the air is extremely dry, which is the case at Kilimanjaro's higher-than-19,000-ft. summit (it's the same reason ice cubes slowly wilt away in a frost-free freezer). That happens all the time, but if there's less precipitation to build the glaciers back up, which may be the case here, the result...
...That's not to say that Thompson's research is the final word on the debate. Indeed, glacier experts have been waging an intellectual war for years over what's really causing the ice loss atop Kilimanjaro. The simplest explanation would be that warming temperatures are making the ice melt - and indeed, Thompson believes this is a big part of what's going...
...occurring at all, has a relatively minor effect. "The fact that you have melting may mean air temperatures have increased, but it doesn't necessarily," says Philip Mote, who heads the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. "And in fact, the temperature on the summit of Kilimanjaro is essentially always below freezing, which makes it hard to accept warming as the reason [for glacier loss...
...first blush that the scientists are arguing over whether global warming is even happening. That would be a mistake. While he doesn't think Thompson's case is proven, Mote has no doubt that the climate is changing and that humans are largely responsible; he just doesn't think Kilimanjaro's glaciers are being melted out of existence...
...just result in higher temperatures. It also leads to changes in weather patterns, including more intense precipitation in some areas, more severe droughts in others (and sometimes, as in the case of the American Southeast, a little of both). And that may well be what's happening at Kilimanjaro. While strongly disputing Thompson's explanation, Georg Kaser of the Institut für Geographie in Innsbruck, Austria, writes that "we are confident that global warming is the ultimate driver of glacier shrinkage on Kilimanjaro due to the strong relation between Indian Ocean dynamics and East African precipitation...