Journal of Climate paper

A new paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate titled "Quantifying climate change in the tropical mid troposphere over East Africa from glacier shrinkage on Kilimanjaro" with authors Thomas Mölg, Nicolas Cullen, Douglas Hardy, Michael Winkler, and Georg Kaser. This group has been collaborating for several years; most are part of the Tropical Glaciology Group at the Univerity of Innsbruck.

The paper examines 19th century recession of the southern-slope Kersten Glacier, by backward modeling with a spatially-distributed mass-balance model. Results indicate that late-19th century precipitation was higher by +160 to +240 mm/yr, dominating the mass budget and producing a larger glacier extent. Today, the Kersten Glacier terminus is ~600 m higher in elevation, and the glacier is loosing mass at ~500 kg/m^2/yr.

-Doug Hardy, UMass Geosciences

Another dry month

Little snowfall on the Northern Ice Field between mid-February and 28 March, satellite telemetry indicates. Only one mid-month event of 2 cm. Then, a snowy interval 28 March to 2 April bringing ~6 cm of accumulation. Six centimeters isn't much, but it is enough to substantially raise the albedo and keep it elevated for several weeks. Hopefully more snow will follow...

-Doug Hardy, UMass Geosciences

2009 Long Rains...

seem to be late. Normally, the wet season is underway by now. Through most of March this year, however, conditions remained dry. Very soon we will post a synopsis of measurements on the weather page. Normally this page is updated on the first or second of each month, but we're late this month due to personnel changes in the UMass Climate Center.