Gore started this. Note to journalists everywhere: IT’S THE EVAPOTRANSPIRATION STUPID!
See this article to understand why linking Kilimanjaro glacier retreat to small changes in global temperature is just flat wrong. The plains around Kilimanjaro have gone through years of deforestation. Less trees > less evapotranspiration > less snow.
Don’t believe me? Here’s news of a recent study from Portsmouth University Of Mt. Kilimanjaro ice waving us good-bye due to deforestation. Here’s another peer reviewed study from UAH saying the same thing.
From News.com.au
Agence France-Presse
The ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 1912 was 85 per cent smaller by 2007, and since 2000 the existing ice sheet has shrunk by 26 per cent, the paleoclimatologists said.
The findings point to the rise in global temperatures as the most likely cause of the ice loss.
Changes in cloudiness and precipitation may have also played a smaller, less important role, especially in recent decades, they added.
“This is the first time researchers have calculated the volume of ice lost from the mountain’s ice fields,” study co-author Lonnie Thompson said.
Mr Thompson is the professor of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University.
“If you look at the percentage of volume lost since 2000 versus the percentage of area lost as the ice fields shrink, the numbers are very close,” he said in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
While the yearly loss of the mountain glaciers was most apparent from the retreat of their margins, Mr Thompson said an equally troubling effect was the thinning of the ice fields from the surface.
The summits of both the Northern and Southern Ice Fields atop Kilimanjaro have thinned by 1.9m) and 5.1m respectively.
The smaller Furtwangler Glacier, which was melting and water-saturated in 2000 when it was drilled, has thinned as much as 50 per cent between 2000 and 2009.
“It has lost half of its thickness,” Mr Thompson said. “In the future, there will be a year when Furtwangler is present and by the next year, it will have disappeared.
“The whole thing will be gone.”
The scientists said they found no evidence of sustained melting anywhere else in the ice core samples they extracted, which date back 11,700 years.**
They said their findings show that current climate conditions over Mt Kilimanjaro were unique over the last 11 millennia.
See the story at news.com.au
=========================
** There wasn’t organized farming near Kilimanjaro until the last century. Farming preparation clears trees, trees evapotranspirate mositure. Less trees, less moisture.
No surprise then they don’t see it in the ice core record. It is simply bad science to not consider land use issues looking you in the face while you drill ice cores on the slopes. – Anthony
You see, climate change in general and global warming in particular result in an increase of global codswallop. Every once in a while the supply of codswallop becomes depleted and the “conventional wisdom” needs a fresh injection as is the case here by the French Press Agency.
Has the extra crow been ordered? Will there be enough?
Once again, science takes a back seat to politics.
They recycle all the old debunked AGW cows, get used to it.
The advantage is that we have all the counter publications available for re-use immediately. Makes life easy, doesn’t it.
OT: Anthony, not sure if someone else hasn’t submitted this, but it seemed worth discussion here on you blog. Apparently the hockey stick is making it’s way into college textbooks:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/30/perceptible-shift-to-politics/
And all this loss with the temperature at the top of the mountain being below 0 C. Amazing what global warming will do isn’t it?
Here’s CNN’s version of the same story, only with pretty pictures:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/11/02/kilimanjaro.glaciers/index.html
So wondering what happened to basic fact checking and journalistic integrity, I decided to do a bit of research into CNN’s writer Azadeh Ansari and found that she was also responsible for this incisive piece “Meat for Sex?”;
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/08/meat-for-monkey-sex/
along with various other disassociated garbage:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/04/24/climate.change.eskimos/index.html
http://noolmusic.com/cnn_videos/global_warming_threat_cnn_com_writer_azadeh_ansari_explains.php
So apparently CNN’s Azadeh Ansari is an entertainment writer versus a real journalist…
Ahem…
“Meyer, the first explorer to climb the mountain, observed that in 1889 the crater floor was almost entirely covered with weathered ice, commenting “the volcanic activity of Kilimanjaro is now a thing of the past; there is no trace even of fumaroles”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v153/n3885/abs/153454a0.html
And a touristy site states:
“Fumaroles still emit gas in the crater on the main summit of Kibo, but the mountain is considered an inactive volcano.”
http://www.romartraveler.com/ROMAR07/Romar07Pages/Africa/Kilimanjaro.html
So… let me see if I have this right. In 1889 Meyer notes that there are no active fumaroles on the VOLCANO Kilimanjaro, and a modern day tourist site notes that there are. That would seem to indicate an increase in activity. (meager that it is) We have snow/Ice disappearing on a volcano… and it has to be AGW.
Yeah… right.
I wonder if anybody has done any interferometric peeks at it so see if it may be swelling.
I think our friend “AL” needs to get his swimsuit and head to Beijing. I mean, he is so sure about global warming…right? It has snowed for 6 consecutive days and is freaking everyone out…biggest and longest snow in the last 128 years. Ok “AL”…go swimming. I will buy him the airline ticket, if I can watch.
Fewer Trees
not less trees
I’m telling ya… it because of all those hot heads from Hollywood going up the mountain for The Cause…
Above the melt altitude, he should read up on snow-ice ablation by sublimation in cold (sub-zero) temperatures particularly in strong sunlight, strong winds and in dry air. Work was done in the Moroccan Atlas I think.
It would seem to me that this Professor Thompson is just being a [snip]..like most of them are these days.
I used to think the title professor was attained after a lot of hard work and demonstration of a certain amount of ability and had respect in the community and amongst peers. But not anymore.
I checked some local Kilimanjaro stations here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/findstation.py?datatype=gistemp&data_set=1&name=&world_map.x=446&world_map.y=229
No temperature changes that seem significant.
Slight cooling
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=122636120000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Cooling to 1970 then warming:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=122637400001&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
I thought this one had a stake through the heart. Obviously more zombie science.
Anthropogenic yes, climate change no. An obvious need for global governance to outlaw axes and saws. But remember, when axes and saws are outlawed, only outlaws will have axes and saws.
It’s in the NYT now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/africa/03melt.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
This is great news! In 2001, the NYTimes reported that the ice on Kilimanjaro would be gone in 15 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/world/a-message-in-eroding-glacial-ice-humans-are-turning-up-the-heat.html
Today CNN says we have two decades
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/11/02/kilimanjaro.glaciers/index.html
So we’ve gained about 15 more years!
And you wonder why there is a Party in Alaska that wants to secede from the Union. They don’t feel safe from the Energy Pirates any more.
Meanwhile, in Steaming Equatorial Fairbanks, Alaska it is –
11.7 °F
Scattered Clouds
Windchill: 12 °F
Humidity: 74%
Dew Point: 5 °F
Wind: Calm
Tonight
Increasing clouds. Lows zero to 15 below. Coldest in sheltered valleys. Northeast winds 5 to 15 mph.
Well I would say that the current climate conditions are unique all over the earth, for at least the last 4.5 billion years, so nothing special about the last 11,700 over KMJ being unique. Gaia never repeats herself.
I know, let’s go to Clyde, Baffin Island, to check on Leanord Nimoy’s “In Search of the Coming Ice Age” bellweather:
-4 °F
Clear
Windchill: -15 °F
Humidity: 55%
Dew Point: -17 °F
Wind: 5 mph from the SW
Tonight
A few clouds. Low -24C(-11F).
Mt. Kilimanjaro story is so 5 years ago summer reruns.
This would make a great proxy for reforestation in that area. Time to get on it.
Sherri from Atlanta, ewwww. Just, ewwww.
Lying about the Kilimanjaro makes Gore rich.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html
What, more Kili-vanilli?
Here’s a link to Wikipedia’s entry for prof. Lonnie Thompson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Thompson
Here are extracts from that entry:
Rolling Stone magazine says that there is no person in the world that has spent more time above 18,000 feet than Lonnie Thompson.[4].
His observations of glacier retreat (1970s–2000s) “confirm that glaciers around the world are melting and provide clear evidence that the warming of the last 50 years is now outside the range of climate variability for several millennia, if not longer.”[5] In 2001, he predicted that the famed snows of Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro would melt within the next 20 years, a victim of climate change across the tropics. Return expeditions to the mountain have shown that changes in the mountain’s ice fields may signal an even quicker melting of its snow fields, which Thompson documented had existed for thousands of years. Thompson and his wife both served as advisers for the Academy Award-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore, Jr., and some of their work was referenced in the movie.
Honors and awards
2001: Thompson was featured among eighteen scientists and researchers as “America’s Best” by CNN and Time Magazine.
2002: Thompson was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
2002: Thompson was awarded the Vega Medal by the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography.
2005: Thompson was elected to the National Academy of Science.[2]
November, 2005: Thompson was featured in a “Rolling Stone” article, “The Ice Hunter”.
2005: Thompson was awarded the prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, an honor often regarded as the environmental science equivalent to the Nobel Prize. [3]
February, 2007: Mosley-Thompson and Thompson were jointly awarded the Roy Chapman Andrews Society Distinguished Explorer Award at Beloit College, Beloit, WI. [4]
May, 2007: Thompson is named to receive the National Medal of Science. [5] This honor is the highest the United States can bestow upon an American scientist. It was presented to Thompson by President Bush in July 2007 (Award year 2005). [6]
2008: Mosley-Thompson and Thompson share the $1 million Dan David Prize (Future category) with British researcher Geoffrey Eglinton.
2008: Thompson was listed as one of Time Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment.[6]
Lonnie Thompson has been awarded 53 research grants from the NSF, NASA, NOAA and NGS and has published 165 papers.