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.