| Popis: |
A last mapping of Mount Kenya's vanishing glaciers was accomplished with a photo flight in September 2004. This invites a documentation of the variations in the course of the past more than a century and closes the sequence of photogrammetric mappings for 1947, 1963, 1987, and 1993. A decades-long glaciological monitoring program has been undertaken on the largest, the Lewis Glacier. Regarding the historical continuity of glaciological observations, Mount Kenya and especially Lewis Glacier are unique within the tropics. In contrast to the other two glaciated mountain regions on the Equator, glacier recession in East Africa began only in the 1880's, concomitant with an abrupt change in atmospheric circulation and decrease in cloudiness and precipitation. Increased net shortwave radiation provided the forcing for the onset of the glacier recession, while the later ice shrinkage on Mount Kenya may be ascribed to greenhouse effects. |
