| Summary: | In equatorial East Africa, glaciers still exist on Mount Kenya, Kilimanjaro, and Ruwenzori. The decreasing ice extent has been documented by field reports since the end of the 19th century and a series of mappings. For Mount Kenya, the mappings are of 1947, 1963, 1987, 1993, and 2004, with more detailed mappings of Lewis Glacier in 1934, 1958, 1963, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1990, and 1993. For Kilimanjaro, the sequence is 1912, 1953, 1976, 1989, and 2000. For Ruwenzori (for which information is more scarce), the information is from 1906, 1955, and 1990. Photographs are valuable complementary evidence. At Lewis Glacier on Mount Kenya, measurements of mass budget and ice flow have been conducted over decades. The climatic forcing of ice recession in East Africa at the onset in the 1880s was radiationally controlled, affecting the most exposed locations. Later warming caused further ice shrinkage, except on the summit plateau of Kilimanjaro, above the freezing level. Whereas the ice recession in the Ecuadorian Andes and New Guinea began in the middle of the 19th century, plausibly caused by warming, the late onset in East Africa should be appreciated in the context of large-scale circulation changes evidenced by the historical ship observations in the equatorial Indian Ocean.
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