Compared to previous estimations, the overall area has declined by more than a half of its early 21st-century extent
Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Photo for representation: iStock Analysis of high-resolution satellite images for the years 2021-2022 found that Africa's ice is disappearing, and the continent may lose its white peaks by the middle of the century.
A study published in the journal Environmental Research February 12, 2024 showed the quick pace at which the tropical glaciers in East Africa are shrinking — the ice fields in Africa have more than halved since the beginning of the 21st century.
In East Africa, glaciers are present in the Rwenzori Mountains (Uganda / Democratic Republic of Congo), Mount Kenya (Kenya), and Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), all within 3° latitude of the equator.
The area of tropical glaciers in East Africa was observed to have shrunk to 1.36 square kilometres, with a glacier area of 0.98 sq km on Kilimanjaro, 0.069 sq km on Mount Kenya and 0.38 sq km in the Rwenzori Range.
Compared to the first reliable glacier surface area observations around 1900, Kilimanjaro has only retained 8.6 per cent of its glacier area, Mount Kenya 4.2 per cent and the Rwenzori Range 5.8 per cent.
Tropical glaciers are important indicators of climate variability and climate change. While Prinz and Molg (2020) concluded that more than 80 per cent of the East African glacier area had disappeared by 2010, "the new estimates for the early 2020s showed that more than 90 per cent of the modern glacier extent is gone".
Kilimanjaro possesses most of the East African glacier area. Over the last century, all glaciers on Kilimanjaro have been retreating and some have vanished completely.
A distinct retreat since the last mapping is seen for the Southern Ice Field and the Kersten Glacier, which has resulted in an area loss of approximately 59 per cent for the SIF and 54 per cent for the Kersten glacier since 2011.
Pronounced retreat appears to have led to the disappearance of the Arrow, Uhlig and the western part of the Great Barranco glaciers. But the researchers said that field observations are still required to confirm this, given how small these remaining ice fragments might be if still present.
The glaciers on Mount Kenya lost more than half of their 2016 extent by 2021-22. The peak has the smallest amount of glacier area in East Africa, shrinking from 0.15 sq km to 0.069 sq km. Within this period, the general strong retreat of all glaciers caused the disappearance of the Northey and Darwin glaciers, as well as the loss of the southeastern part of Lewis Glacier, which split into two segments between 2014 and 2016, said the study led by Anne Hinzmann, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).
The Rwenzori Range is the only glacierised high mountain region in East Africa influenced by moister climatic conditions. While six mountains in the range were glaciated at the beginning of the 20th century, the number dropped to three mountains of central Rwenzori by the 1990s — Mount Stanley, Mount Speke and Mount Baker.
These mountains had a glacier area of 0.38 sq km in January 2022, with Mount Stanley accounting for 92 per cent of the glacier area. Based on an estimated extent of 1.14 sq km in 2005, there has been an overall retreat of 67 per cent since.
Globally, three high mountain regions have contained tropical glaciers in recent centuries — the South American Andes, the Indonesian Sudirman Range and the three highest massifs in East Africa.
All tropical glaciers have one thing in common — they are situated near the Equator and inside the astronomic tropics, and are influenced by the Intertropical Convergence Zone.
The Intertropical Convergence Zone is the region that circles the Earth, near the equator, where the trade winds of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres come together.
A shift in the regional moisture regime towards a drier climate in the late 19th century contributed to the observed onset of glacial retreat in East Africa.
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