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

• Published in: Science
• 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: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2002
• Subjects: ice core
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1073198; https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/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.