Furtwängler Glacier (foreground) on Mount Kilimanjaro as it appeared in August 2003. Behind the glacier are snowfields and the Northern Icefield.

Africa, specifically East Africa, has contained glacial regions, possibly as far back as the last glacial maximum 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Seasonal snow does exist on the highest peaks of East Africa as well as in the Drakensberg Range of South Africa, the Stormberg Mountains, and the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Currently, the only remaining glaciers on the continent exist on Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and the Rwenzori.[1]

List of glaciers

Kenya

(All located on the upper slopes of Mount Kenya[2])

  • Mr. Ali Cesar Glacier
  • Diamond Glacier
  • Darwin Glacier (Kenya)
  • Forel Glacier
  • Gregory Glacier
  • Heim Glacier
  • Josef Glacier
  • Kraph Glacier
  • Lewis Glacier
  • Northey Glacier
  • Tyndall Glacier

Rwenzori Mountains

  • Speke Glacier[3]
  • Elena
  • Stanley
  • Baker

Tanzania

All Tanzanian glaciers are located on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. The mountain had 16 named glaciers and three icefields in the middle of the 20th century but by the 1990s, at least 4 glaciers had disappeared and the remaining glaciers had retreated.[4]

See also

References

  1. "East African Highlands | ICCI – International Cryosphere Climate Initiative". Iccinet.org. Retrieved 2014-03-07.
  2. Hastenrath, Stefan (1984). The Glaciers of Equatorial East Africa. Solid Earth Sciences Library. Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-277-1572-2.
  3. Kaser, Georg; Noggler, Bernd (1991). "Observations on Speke Glacier, Ruwenzori Range, Uganda". Journal of Glaciology. 37 (127): 313–318. Bibcode:1991JGlac..37..313K. doi:10.1017/S0022143000005736.
  4. Young, James A.T. (1991). "Glaciers of the Middle East and Africa - Glaciers of Africa" (pdf). U. S. Geological Survey. Retrieved October 8, 2014.
  5. 1 2 N. J. Cullen; P. Sirguey; T. M¨olg; G. Kaser; M. Winkler; S. J. Fitzsimons (2013). "A century of ice retreat on Kilimanjaro: the mapping reloaded" (pdf). The Cryosphere. 7: 419–431. Bibcode:2013TCry....7..419C. doi:10.5194/tc-7-419-2013.
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