October fieldwork

Yes... a chainsaw! We depart next week for fieldwork at the weather station and on the glaciers. Conditions at the summit are currently very dry, as elsewhere in East Africa where the drought has brought hardships to many (BBC slideshow). With little snowcover, we will be mapping the pattern of albedo and ablation on the glaciers, and collecting ice samples for 14C dating - a collaborative effort with Margit Schwikowski at Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. Obtaining ice samples and keeping them frozen all the way to Switzerland will not be easy! Cutting them from the glacier will employ a powerful, lightweight battery-powered saw made by Troy-Bilt, with no noise and no emissions. Testing of this newly-available saw has been very encouraging. [Late October update:  listen here to this chainsaw in action, cutting glacier ice!]

The left-hand image illustrates the sampling opportunity these glaciers provide (vertical dimension shown ~30m). Updates on the fieldwork, with photos, will appear here in mid-October.

Important new paper

Want the most up-to-date details on Kilimanjaro's glaciers and climate? A paper published Monday in the Journal of Climate is a good place to start. Thomas Mölg is first author, with input from the rest of us working together on this issue since 2002; the title is "Quantifying climate change in the tropical midtroposphere over East Africa from glacier shrinkage on Kilimanjaro." Important insights emerge from spatially-distributed mass balance modeling, replete with enough sensitivity testing to satisfy even those skeptical of this approach.

The crucial role of atmospheric moisture variability on glacier mass balance is demonstrated once again (esp. precipitation dependency), along with many other interesting results. Most encouraging is the indication that further study of glacier retreat on Kilimanjaro will move us toward a better understanding of why equatorial East Africa continues to become drier -- a question of great societal and environmental importance.

Access the paper here.

Another wet season fails

In the last 10 years on the Northern Icefield, the "long rains" have ended by the first of June. If this holds true for 2009, a second consecutive wet season has failed. The 12-month interval prior to 1 June has been the "driest of the century" by far, with a net glacier-surface lowering of 1.3 meters at the weather station. As this volume of ice has evaporated and melted, dust has been concentrating at the surface, augmenting that present before the late-2006 snowfalls. And with snowfall unlikely over at least the next 4 months, the rate of ice loss could exceed that ever witnessed.

Mid-month snow

On 11 May, snow began accumulating on the Northern Icefield. Through this morning there has been ~4 cm of net accumulation. Not much in the context of most mountain locations - but enough to raise albedo considerably on the glaciers. Hopefully the event will continue for another couple weeks; Juliana Adosi at the Tanzanian Meteorological Agency tells me that the long rains are forecast to end at the end of the month.

-Doug Hardy, UMass Geosciences

Manuscript flurry

Three papers on Kilimanjaro glaciers have been submitted within the past month, and are now in the review process. The sole-authored encyclopedia entry provides a comprehensive overview of the glaciers characteristics and processes. The other two take rather different perspectives and will be sure to stimulate discussion. Stay tuned!

Submitted to The Holocene: Is the decline of ice on Kilimanjaro unprecedented in the Holocene? (Georg Kaser, Thomas Mölg, Nicolas Cullen, Douglas Hardy, and Michael Winkler).

Submitted to Springer’s Encyclopedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers.: Kilimanjaro. (Douglas Hardy).

Submitted to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS): Glacier Loss on Kilimanjaro Continues Unabated. (Lonnie Thompson, Henry Brecher, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Douglas Hardy, and Bryan Mark).

In the beginning, there was Carlos

The beginning of our work on tropical glaciers, that is. Carlos Escobar was our guy in 1996 as we set out to begin climate research on Volcan Sajama in Bolivia. Not just to reach the summit at 6,542 m, not just to camp there for days, but to operate the world's highest-elevation satellite-linked automated weather station. Carlos made it happen and kept it fun, first on Sajama, then on Illimani... the consummate guide who became a friend to us all. And the help and friendship came not only from Carlos, but the whole Escobar family, especially brother Jose Mauro, wife Grissel, niece Monica, Mateo and his other children. International projects can't happen without people like Carlos, who solve the problems and make all the stress of high-elevation research worthwhile.

Today, Carlos passed away after struggling for months with brain cancer. Carlos, our Guía Internacional de Montaña, co-author, Everest summiter just 3 years ago this month, and buen amigo. Compounding the normal emotions is a terrible feeling of helplessness; for all Carlos and his family provided us, not being there to help in such a difficult time is painful...

To all the Escobars, know that all who worked with Carlos and your family are thinking of him, and you. Memories of him live on with each of us. Be strong, live strong...

Doug and the UMass crew

Long rains late

April was another month of net ablation. There was a small snowfall event which began late in March (see 4/10 entry below), but otherwise there was only a few cm on ~21 April.

May could turn out to be snowy however, as it did in 2003 and 2007 following dry March and Aprils. Conversely, the long rains were finished entirely by this time in 2002, 2004 and 2006 - and failed completely in 2000.

At any rate, for the previous 12 month interval, mass balance on the Northern Ice Field has easily been the most negative of the decade.