Snows of Kilimanjaro safe until 2050

dpa German Press Agency Published: Monday April 16, 2007

Vienna- Glaciers on Kenya's Kilimanjaro will recede more
slowly than previously expected, according to estimates by Austrian
climatologists speaking in Vienna on Monday.
"Theories that global warming would lead to a rise in temperatures
and faster melting of the glaciers were too simple," said
climatologist Georg Kaser of Austria's Innsbruck University on Monday
at the annual assembly of the European Union of Geosciences meeting
in Vienna this week.

According to new estimates, glaciers on Africa's highest mountain
range (at 5,895 metres) will not be gone by 2015 as thought
previously but may hold on until 2040 or 2050.

The famous snows of Kilimanjaro are bound to disappear eventually
due to continued evaporation and lack of rainfalls, scientists
believe. Kilimanjaro's glaciers have been receding for the past 120
years, with the shrinkage being far more prominent in the first 80
years of that period.

An international team of scientists, working on the mountain since
2000, detected an annual reduction of the glaciers between 0.5 and
one metre, with the exception of 2006, where it grew slightly due to
heavy snowfalls.

But even with ice cap totally gone, effects on the region's water
resources will be minimal, whereas local tourism is bound to suffer,
Kaser's team believes.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency

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