Predicting is always a fudge, particularly back when no one had ever accurately measured the thickness or volume of that ice-field.
But A National Geographic team used ground-penetrating radar to do that a couple of years ago,
here are some actual measurements. "Using their depth measurements and the known extent of the ice, the team calculated the total ice volume of the Northern Ice Field to be roughly 12 million cubic meters. That’s enough ice to fill all of Manhattan’s Central Park to a depth of 4 meters." "On average, the ice field had fallen in height [that
had been measured] by 6 meters over 15 years. Other glaciers at lower elevations on Kilimanjaro have decreased in height even more substantially" Since "The team found that the ice ranged in thickness from roughly 6 to 54 meters" it's obvious that more parts of it will disappear in about 15 years if the present melt-rate is sustained, just as other parts have already. And if it was all one uniform 4M thickness, there's only a few city blocks worth of it left, and at 2M melt every 5 years, even that'd be long gone before today's kids could see it as adults.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11...il-jones-and-lonnie-thompson-dont-believe-it/
Al Gore's global warming claims on Kilimanjaro glacier – finally dead and buried in the Climategate 2.0 emails – even Phil Jones and Lonnie Thompson don't believe it
Al Gore said in his AIT bag of BS that Mount Kilimanjaro was losing its snow/ice cover due to global warming. Here’s the Transcript of “An Inconvenient Truth”:
Effects of Global Warming
And now we’re beginning to see the impact in the real world. This is Mount Kilimanjaro more than 30 years ago, and more recently. And a friend of mine just came back from Kilimanjaro with a picture he took a couple of months ago. Another friend of mine Lonnie Thompson studies glaciers. Here’s Lonnie with a sliver of a once mighty glacier. Within the decade there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.
I’ve said this many times, Kilimanjaro’s loss of ice cover has to do with sublimation, not warming. The picture of Thompson next to the sliver of ice proves it. Note there’s no meltwater near him. T
hat sliver is a symptom of sublimation – ice evaporating directly into the air, just like ice cubes shrink when left in the freezer too long.
Almost a year ago I wrote this:
OSU’s Dr. Lonnie Thompson pushes gloom and doom, still thinks the snows of Kilimanjaro are melting due to global warming
This is an OSU press release, timed to appear in Eurekalert for Cancun’s COP16 on December 8th, and reposted here verbatim, including the all caps headline. Even though the “melting on Kilimanjaro due to global warming” has been fully debunked by a recent peer reviewed paper (see Kilimanjaro’s snow – it’s about land use change, tree cutting) Dr. Thompson continues to push this false information.
For example, this is a photo (at left) of Dr. Thompson standing next to an ice spire on Kilimanjaro.
Notice any meltwater pools nearby? You won’t, because they aren’t there. Read this quote from this entry to understand why:
The ice cap on Kilimanjaro consists of ice on the 5,700-meter-high flat summit, some with vertical edges, and several slope glaciers, mostly at altitudes where temperatures stay well below freezing and the major source of energy is solar radiation. Considerable infrared radiation is emitted from the glacier surface into the surrounding air, and the glaciers lose the most mass through sublimation-the direct conversion of ice to water vapor. Observers have seen only a trickle of meltwater.
Dr. Thompson seems not to want to understand the process of sublimation on Kilimanjaro
And now today, here’s indication in the Climategate 2.0 emails that I was right.
5315.txt
date: Sat Sep 18 08:48:09 2004
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.xx.xx>
subject: Re: kilimanjaro
to: “Jenkins, Geoff” <geoff.jenkins@metoffice.xx.xx>
Geoff,
The data that are used for the grid box should be within the grid box. They will be low
elevation sites though, and this may be part of the reason. It might be worth seeing if
there is anything in the U/A data – but I reckon there won’t be much in that region.
I’ve heard Lonnie Thompson talk about the Kilimanjaro core and he got some local temperatures – that we don’t have access to, and there was little warming in them. The same situation applies for Quelccaya in Peru and also some of his Tibet sites. Lonnie thinks they are disappearing because of sublimation, but he can’t pin anything down. They are going though.
Lonnie’s email is “Lonnie G. Thompson” <thompson.3@osu.xxx.xxx>
You could try emailing Ellen as well both might be in the field.
Ellen Mosley-Thompson <thompson.4@osu.xxx.xxx>
I’m off much of the next 6 weeks at meetings.
I hear you’re retiring soon – hope all goes well ! I’m sure you’ll still be in the field somewhere.
Cheers
Phil
At 10:32 16/09/2004, you wrote:
phil
<<kilimanjaro.doc>>
we have been concerned that people often use the melting glacier on kilimanjaro as an
example of impacts of man-made warming. you may have seen some stories countering this on the sceptics websites.
I got philip brohan to look at temps there (see attached) and there isnt any convincing consistent recent warming in the station data. but your gridded CRUtem2V does show a recent warming. presumably that is because (as philip suggests) the gridded stuff has influences from quite a large radius, and hence may reflect warming at stations a long way from kilimanjaro?
would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?
be grateful for your help
cheers
geoff
Dr Geoff Jenkins
Head, Climate Prediction Programme
Hadley Centre
Met Office
FitzRoy Road, EXETER, EX1 3PB, UK
tel: +44 (0) 1392 xxxxxx
mobile: 0787 966 1136
[1]www.hadleycentre.xxxx.xx
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email
p.jones@uea.ac.uk
NR4 7TJ
UK
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