More proof positive that land use change has more to do with Kilimanjaro’s diminishing snowfall (due to reduced evapotranspiraton of surrounding land) than climate change. But, will we ever see Al Gore or Dr. Lonnie Thompson say anything other than “it was AGW that did it”? Doubtful. Still I keep printing these studies on Kilimanjaro and land use change in hopes that someday, they and the media will get a clue.
From Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.:
New Study “Land Use Change Impacts On Regional Climate Over Kilimanjaro” By Fairman Jr. Et Al 2011
There is a new paper which addresses an interesting question on the role of land use/land cover change in the vicinity of Mount Kilimanjaro on the climate in this region. The paper is
Fairman, J. G., Jr., U. S. Nair, S. A. Christopher, and T. Mölg (2011), Land use change impacts on regional climate over Kilimanjaro, J. Geophys. Res., 116, D03110, doi:10.1029/2010JD014712
and the abstract reads
“Glacier recession on Kilimanjaro has been linked to reduction in precipitation and cloudiness largely because of large‐scale changes in tropical climate. Prior studies show that local changes in land cover can also impact orographic cloudiness, precipitation, and terrain‐generated circulation patterns. This study uses the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System to simulate dry season orographic cloudiness, rainfall, and orographic flow patterns over Kilimanjaro for current deforested and reforested land cover scenarios. The simulations for current land cover show satisfactory performance compared to surface meteorology and satellite‐observed cloudiness. Clouds occur less frequently in response to deforestation, with the magnitude of decrease increasing with deforestation. On the windward side, cloud liquid water path (LWP) and precipitation both show decreases at lower elevations (∼1000–2000 m) and increases at higher elevations (2000–4000 m) in response to deforestation. This pattern is caused by decreased aerodynamic resistance, leading to enhanced wind speeds and convergence at higher elevations. On the lee regions, LWP deficits found in deforested simulations coincide with regions of reduced moisture while precipitation increased slightly at lower elevations (1000–1800 m) and decreased at higher elevations (1800–4000 m). Kilimanjaro offers less obstruction to background airflow, and reduced moisture transport to the lee side is found for deforested conditions, causing reduced LWP and rainfall. However, land use change has little effect on cloudiness and rainfall at elevations in excess of 4000 m and is not expected to impact glaciers in the summit zone of Kilimanjaro during the dry season. The effect in other seasons requires further investigation.”
The conclusions read
This study utilized numerical model simulations to investigate the impact of land cover changes at lower elevations of Kilimanjaro on the regional climate of the area. RAMS was used to simulate atmospheric conditions for July 2007, assuming current, deforested, and forested land cover scenarios. The findings from the comparison of these simulations can be summarized as follows.
1. Comparison of RAMS simulations for current land use conditions against surface meteorological observations and satellite observations of cloudiness show satisfactory performance of RAMS over the study region.
2. The RAMS simulations show that deforestation at lower elevations of Kilimanjaro lead to a decrease in the frequency of cloud occurrence at all elevations. The cloud liquid water path decreases in response to deforestation except at higher elevations on the windward side where it increases. Reforestation has the opposite effect, increasing frequency of occurrence of clouds at all elevations, increases in cloud liquid water path except at higher elevation on the windward side where it decreases.
3. Precipitation decreases at low elevations and increases at midelevations on the windward side in response to deforestation. On the leeward side, precipitation decreases at midelevations, while there is a very small increase at lower elevations. The magnitude of differences increases with the extent of deforestation.
4. Flow diversion values computed for the different scenarios also show that obstruction caused by Kilimanjaro is enhanced when the lower elevations areas are reforested.
5. Surface moisture patterns are also altered because of changes in terrain flow, with reforestation increasing moisture transport to the lee side of the mountain compared to current vegetation and deforestation.
6. While differences in surface moisture contributes to decrease in frequency of occurrence in cloudiness, changes in flow pattern caused by reduced aerodynamic roughness play an important role. When the lower‐elevation regions are deforested, Kilimanjaro offer less obstruction to background flow, and the resulting increase in flow around the mountain causes reduced moisture transport to the lee side, causing reduced cloud liquid water path and precipitation. On the windward side, the increase in wind speed directed parallel to the topographic gradient at higher elevations, caused by reduced aerodynamic roughness in upwind areas, leads to enhanced surface convergence, cloud liquid water path, and precipitation.
7. Lack of precipitation at the peak during the period of study prevents making conclusions about potential impacts on precipitation at that level. Further study is required to investigate the possibility of such effects occurring during other seasons.
This study addresses only the impact of deforestation on one dry season month. There are no compelling reasons for expecting the physical processes that cause the changes in clouds and precipitation to be substantially different if the analysis is extended to include the dry season month of July from other years. However, further study that extends the analysis to other seasons is required to establish the overall impact of land use change on the higher‐elevation climate of Kilimanjaro.
This is yet another important study which documents the significant role of human alterations of the landscape on the climate.
Here are some previous articles:
Oh no, not this Kilimanjaro ice rubbish again!
Gore wrong on Kilimanjaro snow: Its the trees and “freezer burn”
The snow on Kili comes and goes with incredible rapidity. It sublimes rather than melts, under the tropical sun. I climbed the mountain in 1992, and I have photos showing it in its ‘1993’ state and then 2 days later in its ‘2000’ state.
Here are some more recent images from NASA! They don’t make it easy to find.
2007
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/28634332@N05/4722040376/
http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~4~4~17039~120818:Perspective-with-Landsat-Overlay,-M
The article, describing the effects of land use, says specifically that it hasn’t affected the ice fields at the very top, i.e. the glaciers. The height of Kilimanjaro is 5895 m. The abstract clearly says:
However, land use change has little effect on cloudiness and rainfall at elevations in excess of 4000 m and is not expected to impact glaciers in the summit zone of Kilimanjaro during the dry season. The effect in other seasons requires further investigation.
It seems that land use is associated with changes below 4000 m, but that does not apply to glaciers of Kilimanjaro. Currently the glaciers are limited to areas above 4500 M in elevation. The evidence is that they never were extended much below 4000m. Check out the following paper -The glacier map is on page 14:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1386g/africa.pdf
The controversy has been about loss of glaciers at the summit of Kilimanjaro.
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-11-02/tech/kilimanjaro.glaciers_1_glaciers-mount-kilimanjaro-lonnie-thompson?_s=PM:TECH
It is clear that this paper indicates that land use changes are not responsible for loss of glaciers at the summit.
REPLY: Wrong. You are cherry picking, Mr. Adler:
7. Lack of precipitation at the peak during the period of study prevents making conclusions about potential impacts on precipitation at that level. Further study is required to investigate the possibility of such effects occurring during other seasons.
i.e. there’s been so much deforestation that now they can’t observe precip at higher levels in a single study because there’s not enough moisture imparted by local evapotranspiration for orographic induced precip to continue much beyond the average LCL. Most of the water content is already precipitated by the time it reaches the summit. Thus, there’s no addition to the snowpack, and thus the glaciers at higher level gradually sublimate away. In all the photos you see of intrepid scientist and data archiving refusnik Thompson, he’s standing next to spires that are clearly the result of sublimation processes, not melting. Yet despite overwhelming evidence that land use change is the biggest factor, you, he and many others cling to the belief that this is about temperature, when its actually about land use change, evapotranspiration, sublimation, and the LCL. – Anthony
– Anthony
Uh, not to throw a bomb into this parade of jubilant celebration, but the abstract reads (and the paper is consistent with), “However, land use change has little effect on cloudiness and rainfall at elevations in excess of 4000 m and is not expected to impact glaciers in the summit zone of Kilimanjaro during the dry season. The effect in other seasons requires further investigation.” Thus, while this certainly doesn’t prove Warmists right (the other seasons have yet to be tested, and the wet season may be more significant), it is not showing how land-use has led to glacial retreat. One must be careful in ascribing more to a paper than is actually there. I agree, models are not perfect, these results are not absolute, and certainly there are older studies that support the land-use conclusion, but you just can not justify that from this paper itself. Just sayin.
REPLY: See my response to Eadler above – Anthony
Jacob,
You are a scholar, and are elevating the discussion here significantly!
I’ll believe someone like braddles, who has actually been there, to a bunch of grant hogging scientists writing from the safety of their ivory tower. Read between the lines and you can see they’ve already got their hand out for more tax money: “The effect in other seasons requires further investigation.” And with more grant money I’m sure they’re ready to take up the challenge.
The frantic arm-waving by the alarmist crowd over what is, if anything, simply natural variability, is always fun to observe. Do they really believe that CO2 is gobbling up the glacier? And that CO2 picks only certain glaciers to eat? Or that a fraction of a degree warming over a century and a half is the cause?? These folks have gone completely off the deep end.
Thanx to Jimbo for the pics. Hey, I can cherry-pick as well as the CAGW promoters at NASA:
click1
click2
click3 [looks more like the 1993 pic, doesn’t it?]
Eadler said :
It is clear that this paper indicates that land use changes are not responsible for loss of glaciers at the summit.
REPLY: Wrong. You are cherry picking, Mr. Adler:
7. Lack of precipitation at the peak during the period of study prevents making conclusions about potential impacts on precipitation at that level. Further study is required to investigate the possibility of such effects occurring during other seasons.
i.e. there’s been so much deforestation that now they can’t observe precip at higher levels in a single study because there’s not enough moisture imparted by local evapotranspiration for orographic induced precip to continue much beyond the average LCL. Most of the water content is already precipitated by the time it reaches the summit. Thus, there’s no addition to the snowpack, and thus the glaciers at higher level gradually sublimate away. In all the photos you see of intrepid scientist and data archiving refusnik Thompson, he’s standing next to spires that are clearly the result of sublimation processes, not melting. Yet despite overwhelming evidence that land use change is the biggest factor, you, he and many others cling to the belief that this is about temperature, when its actually about land use change, evapotranspiration, sublimation, and the LCL. – Anthony
– Anthony
I will admit to an overstatement. Jacob’s statement is more accurate.
The paper does not say anything specifically about the causes of glacier decline. They simulated the dry period, when no precip occurs at the elevations of the glaciers. Their paper doesn’t prove that land use changes are responsible for the decline of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers. It indicates that during the dry season, there is no precipitation at that level, before or after the land use changes. They say:
This study uses the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System to simulate dry season orographic cloudiness, rainfall, and orographic flow patterns over Kilimanjaro for current deforested and reforested land cover scenarios.
If you argue against cherry picking, it seems incongruous to claim that a single picture, proves that sublimation is what is reducing the size of glaciers.
However, I don’t dispute that sublimation is the major means of glacier mass loss. What is the issue is what causes the mass gain to go below the mass loss.
Is it reduction in precip due to land use, or changes in the circulation of the Indian Ocean, which could be related to global warming. The paper above is silent on that.
Here is an excellent paper which provides some excellent background on this controversy. The author doesn’t agree with Thompson and Gore, but does cite global warming as the culprit in the disappearance of the bulk of the world’s alpine glaciers.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2007/4/the-shrinking-glaciers-of-kilimanjaro-can-global-warming-be-blamed/8
REPLY:No claim (other than yours) was made about a single picture. Again, cherry picking. Sorry, we aren’t talking about other glaciers, don’t try to change the subject when you’ve been pinned. The article is about Kilimanjaro, not alpine glaciers. Just admit you’ve boobed and move on – Anthony
Not sure whether this study adds much to previous Pepin paper in 2010 (WUWT 09-28-10) !
REPLY:No claim (other than yours) was made about a single picture. Again, cherry picking. Sorry, we aren’t talking about other glaciers, don’t try to change the subject when you’ve been pinned. The article is about Kilimanjaro, not alpine glaciers. Just admit you’ve boobed and move on – Anthony
The paper hasn’t shown that land use is responsible for the lack of precipitation during the wet period, as Jacob and I pointed out. There are two possibilities mentioned in the literature, besides Thompsons idea, land use and changes in the Indian Ocean.
Dear Anthony,
I am chagrined. Last month you hooted at and ridiculed a paper that hypothesized that curtailment of human land use practices (via mass slaughters by Genghis Khan and/or disease epidemics in the post-Columbian Americas) might have effected the climate. Yet now you cite as “proof” models (yes models) that finger anthropogenic “deforestation” for impacting climate.
Can human land use activities alter albedos, cloud formation, precipitation, temperatures? If so, then sudden elimination (due to sudden massive human population decline) of land uses (such as landscape-scale anthropogenic fire) might possibly affect climate, too, by reversing or mitigating the prior impacts.
B follows A, n’est-ce pas?
Just a different perspective-
If snows were melting on Kilimanjaro due to higher temps, this would be evidence
against AGW.
Going back to basics, whether the overall ave global temp is going up or down is statistically irrelevant: If dinosaurs still walked the Earth today- what would be the odds that a warming trend occured in the last 100 years? 50%
What we are looking for re. AGW due to GHG is a signature of extra warmth, regardless of any current direction in natural variation.
Nobody disputes that this signature would be relatively higher trending temps at both poles- due to the GH effect being a form of insulation.
While the arctic has warmed, Antarctica has been flat to cooling since the sat. records begam in ’79. Any warming trend at the equator (e.g. Kilimanjaro) only widens this discrepancy and provides further evidence that any ave. warming is not AGW related.
Moderater,
Since the Test page does not allow me to comment (there in no comment dialog box) then I will test my html tage nested imbedding here.
My test follows:
Another penetrating point by Horner on the GWPF webpage (emphasis mine):
This is complete BS. Here in the Pacific Northwest we actually send humans up to the mountain and they measure the snow pack using a screw-tube, not through remote sensing like aereal photographs.
We cannot know exactly what man’s effects on climate are since the climate is always in a state of flux, with no “zero” or “base”to rely upon. Since the earth is big heat exchanger, moving warmer air masses from the tropics to the poles and vice versa, the amount of error in models is unsustainable.
But do not fool yourself, man has the capability to make this earth uninhabitable, and no tax cuts can change that fact.
REPLY: sage advice from a foods expert. Yep