OSU Geoscience Dept. research has conducted a detailed analysis of six cores showing that those tropical glaciers began to form about 11,700 years ago with evidence of three catastrophic droughts that plagued the tropics 8,300, 5,200 and 4,000 years ago. Five years after warning that the famed ice fields on Tanzania 's Mount Kilimanjaro may melt, Ohio State University researchers have sadly found that their prediction is coming true. And the impact of the loss of that ice atop Africa 's highest peak disregarding the loss of tourism that will follow the vanishing ice could add to the heavy drought burden already facing those living near that mountain.
For Lonnie Thompson, professor of geological sciences, his third expedition to the summit of Kilimanjaro was all too much like visiting a sick friend in failing health. In 2002, Thompson and his colleagues shocked the scientific community with their prediction that the ice fields capping the mountain would disappear between 2015 and 2020, the victims, at least in part, of global warming. Returning to his campus office last week, he admits that nothing has happened to alter that prediction. In fact, the mountain's ice fields may disappear sooner.
The change there is so dramatic, he said. We can see it both in the field and from aerial photographs of the mountaintop. I would say it is on track to disappear, and the rate of ice loss may even be accelerating. But we need to look at the numbers to confirm that. The numbers he refers to are the combined data gathered from both the most recent and earlier expeditions, and from aerial surveys of the ice fields. By comparing these with past data, they can calculate just how much of Kilimanjaro's ice has vanished. About 82 percent of the ice fields were lost between the time they were first mapped in 1912 and 2000.
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