With global warming ‘echoing’ across the world as a fatal disaster for the planet, it seems the environmental scientists are already obsessed with its effects on one and every negative change in the nature’s resources.
True, the findings against the melting of the Himalayas and the poles can reasonable blame global warming for the consequences, but perhaps it’s not the case with each similar happening in the environment.
One of such example is the Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro, which is melting alarmingly in an unusual way. Its not global warming that is causing the melt of the tropical glacier at the mountain’s summit – its sublimation!
Supporting this finding, Philip Mote of the University of Washington and Georg Kaser of the University of Innsbruck in Austria explains,
Kilimanjaro’s ice has been melting away for more than a century, and most of that melt occurred before 1953, prior to the period where science begins to be conclusive about atmospheric warming in that region.
Instead, melt on Kilimanjaro is caused by sublimation, which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures-essentially the glacier gets a giant case of moisture-sapping freezer burn.
While the other glaciers at the mid-latitude regions become warmed and melted by surrounding air in the summer, the air around the tallest in Africa — 19,340-foot — generally stays well below freezing.
Thus it is justifiably concluded that Kilimanjaro snow melts by sublimation, which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures. Thus, the glacier does not get warmed up; in spite it gets a giant case of freezer burn by sapping moisture.
So, it’s wiser to take all the factors into consideration then just zero-in the common factor for all the ice melting phenomenon – i.e. global warming!
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