Source: China View
BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhuanet) — A researcher from the United States and another from Austria say using Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro to illustrate the effects of global warming is misleading. Philip Mote of the University of Washington and Georg Kaser of the University of Innsbruck say Kilimanjaro’s ice has been melting away for more than a century, and most of that melt occurred before 1953. That’s before the period where science begins to be conclusive about atmospheric warming in that region.

And because Kilimanjaro is a tropical glacier, the processes contributing to ice melt are different than those on other mid-latitude glaciers located closer to the Earth’s poles. Mid-latitude glaciers become warmed and melted by surrounding air in the summer, while the air around Kilimanjaro’s 19,340-foot (6,447 m) peak (the tallest in Africa) is generally well below freezing. Ice melt on Kilimanjaro is the result of sublimation, which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures.