Scientists Say Kilimanjaro’s Ice Caps Rapidly Melting The
majestic snow-capped summits of Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro are
melting quickly “” so quickly, in fact, that the ancient
mountain’s ice sheet could completely disappear within 20 years,
says a US study released on Monday. In the study, published in
the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
climatologists reported that the ice cap crowning Kilimanjaro’s
peak shrank by some 85 in the nearly hundred years between 1912
and 2007.Â Even more disturbing,Â however, is the fact that 26
percent of the reduction occurred in the short period from 2000
to 2007 “” an acceleration which they believe has been caused
predominantly by global warming. “This is the first time
researchers have calculated the volume of ice lost from the
mountain’s ice fields,” explained Lonnie Thompson, professor of
earth sciences at Ohio State University and co-author of the
study. “If you look at the percentage of volume lost since 2000
versus the percentage of area lost