by Charles Arthur / Independent/UK (via Common Dreams News Center)

The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, immortalized by an Ernest Hemingway short story, are melting so quickly they are expected to disappear within two decades.

Researchers have found that the ice fields capping Africa's highest mountain shrank by 80 per cent in the last century, from 4.6 square miles in 1912 to just one square mile two years ago, which has brought down the height of the mountain by several feet.

The ice covering the 19,330ft peak “will be gone by about 2020”, said Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University. The process has cut water volume in some Tanzanian rivers that supply villages and hospitals. Global warming is one reason, but scientists say it alone cannot have caused such a dramatic change. The other factors behind the transformation remain a mystery.