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Fabled
equatorial icecaps to disappear
17 May 2006
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Rwenzori
Mountains
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Fabled equatorial icecaps
will disappear within two decades because of global warming, a
study led by UCL has found.
Reporting online in the journal
‘Geophysical Research Letters’, the first survey in a
decade of glaciers in the Rwenzori Mountains, East Africa, has
found that an increase in air temperature over the last four
decades has contributed to a substantial reduction in glacial
cover.
The Rwenzori Mountains – also known as the
‘Mountains of the Moon’ – straddle the border
between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of
Uganda. They are home to one of four remaining tropical ice
fields outside of the Andes and are renowned for their
spectacular and rare Afro-alpine flora and fauna. The mountains’
legendary status was established during the 2nd century when the
Greek geographer Ptolemy made the seemingly preposterous but
ultimately accurate proclamation that the River Nile was supplied
by snow-capped mountains at the equator in Africa: “The
Mountains of the Moon whose snows feed the lakes, sources of the
Nile”.
The glaciers were first surveyed a century
ago when glacial cover over the entire range was estimated to be
6.5 square kilometers Recent field surveys and satellite mapping
of glaciers conducted by UCL with researchers from Makerere
University, Uganda and the Ugandan Water Resources Management
Department show that some glaciers are receding tens of meters
each year and that the area covered by glaciers halved between
1987 and 2003.
The team found that since the 1960s there
are clear trends toward increased air temperature around the
Rwenzori Mountains without significant changes in precipitation.
With less than one square kilometer of glacier ice remaining,
glaciers are expected to disappear within the next twenty years
if present trends continue.
Source
/ Credit: University College , London
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