Rains continue to the West

Here are a couple notes about rainfall to the west of Kilimanjaro; seems like the short rains have been quite good!

Dec. 28th (Marc Baker):  "Just back from the wettest Serengeti in 10 years, first time I have had to abandon two vehicles after two days of constant rain in Piaya."

Jan. 2nd (Jo via Neil Baker) summary of Serengeti and Ngorogoro lakes:
  Lake Magadi ngng - full
  Malanja depression - filling fast
  Olbalbal depression- full and overflowing
  Lake Manyara - filling fast
  Engaruka depression - nearly full

[UPDATE 1/6 (from David Bygott):  Lake Natron also full, raining heavily in Zanzibar]
[UPDATE 1/7 (from Chris Schmeling):  Lake Eyasi close to full; 88mm precip. already this month]

AGU award to Thomas Mölg!

Congratulations to Dr. Mölg on receipt yesterday of AGU's 2009 Young Investigator Award. Thomas has been an invaluable Kilimanjaro collaborator since July 2002, when he joined Ray Bradley and myself on the mountain. Details of Thomas' selection, his bio and publications are here (along with a link to award ceremony video).

-Doug Hardy, UMass Geosciences

Persnickety or seeking truth?

Earlier this month we published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) detailing changes in Kilimanjaro's ice area and thickness since 2000. This is essentially an update on our 2002 paper in Science, and I am the only non-OSU co-author. Considerable media interest followed, as typical for anything new on Kilimanjaro glaciers.

Was this paper reported differently than the 2002 paper? My impression in that many traditional media outlets simply reproduced the Ohio State University Press Release (Lonnie Thompson is first author), rather than using journalists to ask probing questions; much cheaper!

In the aftermath, blogs are discussing how this paper was reported. For example, Tom Yulsman in the Univ. of Colorado Boulder's Center for Environmental Journalism has created an assignment in which students read and analyze the PNAS paper and it's media coverage! And Cruel Mistress has critiqued Sindya Banhoo's article in the NY Times. Andy Revkin got such discussion underway with a NY Times piece back in 2004.

Anyway, another article on issues pertaining to the PNAS paper was published yesterday in the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Journalist Kristin Palpini details my perspective on the research and it's impacts in the media. Although there are a few errors in the article, she does a nice job of illuminating the "debate." As continuing Kilimanjaro discussion in the blogosphere reveals, details are important!

[UPDATE 12/16:  The future of science journalism is discussed in a couple articles published this week, at PoynterOnline and at Nature News.  In the Poynter piece, Natalie Angier (NY Times) notes that "coverage tends to be more fragmented and less comprehensive than it once was" and Charles Petit (Knight Science Journalism Tracker) "doesn't recall seeing very many investigative science pieces..." The article by Mallary Jean Tenore references a July 2009 Pew study which "found that 76 percent of scientists surveyed say news reports don't distinguish between findings that are well-founded and those that are not." And in the Nature article, Andy Revkin discusses how the "role of journalism is definitely shrinking."]

[UPDATE 1/7:  Jack Williams' blog entry yesterday has a nice discussion of the problem mentioned above, following some thoughts about low temperatures across the eastern U.S.]

-Doug Hardy, UMass Geosciences

Snowfall continues

Consistent with the regional rainfall picture, Kilimanjaro's summit is seeing day after day of snowfall. Last week the Northern Ice Field saw another ~10 cm of snow accumulation!

Short rains begin

On the Northern Ice Field, snow began accumulating on 26 October as the regional "short rains" got underway. Timba at Ahsante Tours & Safaris reports that Kibo was white on Monday Morning (2 Nov.), and telemetry shows that by Tuesday morning 8 cm blanketed the glacier at the AWS.

So for the 2009 dry season, between the last snowfall in mid-June and the end of October, surface lowering at the Northern Ice Field weather station was 52 cm. This amount is not atypical, as the short rains have come more-or-less on schedule. However, since the dry period on Kilimanjaro began in June 2008, ablation has been quite exceptional - over 1.5 meters of ice. An interesting perspective on the East African drought's cumulative impact - just prior to the short rains - can be seen on NASA's Earth Observatory website. Now, in this El Nino year, flooding has become a problem further north in Kenya.

-Doug Hardy, UMass Geosciences

Snow!

The long dry interval at the summit is over, and snow is again accumulating for the first time since mid-June. Our recent fieldwork aspired to visit the glaciers just before the short rains began, and it seems that our timing worked out. After descending on the 9th, we experienced a heavy, extended rain event the next day at Mbahe (near Marangu). Humidity remained high that afternoon at the AWS, with possibly a dusting of snow. Then snow and sustained high humidity was recorded on the 15th and 16th; during this time Simon reports spending a "hot night" in the crater (i.e., thick cloud cover). AWS measurements show that the wet season really got underway this week on Monday. Telemetry through this morning shows that snowfall continued through Tuesday and Wednesday, with a net of ~4 cm. This is enough to bring the glacier surface albedo up by 20-30 percent!

Fieldwork photos

Here is a link to photos taken on the mountain during Sep/Oct fieldwork. With very little seasonal snowcover due to the drought, we had a rare opportunity to observe glacier margins and ice features. Over the course of a week at the summit, we attended to the automated weather station (AWS), offloaded data from other dataloggers, measured and redrilled ablation stakes, and collected basal-ice samples for dating.
OCT. 2009 PHOTOS