Kilimanjaro Ice Core Records: Evidence of Holocene Climate Change in Tropical Africa

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 298; no. 5593; pp. 589 - 593
• Main Authors: Thompson, Lonnie G., Mosley-Thompson, Ellen, Davis, Mary E., Henderson, Keith A., Brecher, Henry H., Zagorodnov, Victor S., Mashiotta, Tracy A., Lin, Ping-Nan, Mikhalenko, Vladimir N., Hardy, Douglas R., Beer, Jürg
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Association for the Advancement of Science 18.10.2002; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Bedrock; Climate; Climate change; Climate models; Climatic changes; Composition; Core drilling; Drought; Environmental aspects; Freshwater; Geological time; Glaciers; Global warming; Holocene Epoch; Ice; Ice cores; Ice fields; Ice sheets; Lakes; Mountains; Paleoclimatology; Tropical climates; Water; Africa; Mount Kilimanjaro
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.1073198

Six ice cores from Kilimanjaro provide an ~11.7-thousand-year record of Holocene climate and environmental variability for eastern equatorial Africa, including three periods of abrupt climate change: ~8.3, ~5.2, and ~4 thousand years ago (ka). The latter is coincident with the "First Dark Age," the period of the greatest historically recorded drought in tropical Africa. Variable deposition of F- and Na+ during the African Humid Period suggests rapidly fluctuating lake levels between ~11.7 and 4 ka. Over the 20th century, the areal extent of Kilimanjaro's ice fields has decreased ~80%, and if current climatological conditions persist, the remaining ice fields are likely to disappear between 2015 and 2020.