Etude de l'évolution des conditions climatiques dans la région du Kilimandjaro, à l'aide du modèle MAR, sur la période 1951-2014

• Main Author: Flachat, Alexia
• Other Authors: Fettweis, Xavier
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: ULiège - Université de Liège 2015
• Subjects: Kilimanjaro; Climatic modeling; MAR; Climate; Glaciology; Physical; chemical; mathematical & earth Sciences; Earth sciences & physical geography; Physique; chimie; mathématiques & sciences de la terre; Sciences de la terre & géographie physique; Ice cap
• Online Access: https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/190966; https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/190966/1/m%c3%a9moire_alexia_flachat_2015.pdf

Kilimanjaro glaciers appear among the most famous tropical glaciers. Even if they represent only 5% of the moutain glaciers, tropical glaciers are very interesting witnesses of the global warming. Indeed, their time of answer and their sensibility to climatic variations are more important than those of higher latitudes glaciers. Moreover, tropical climate is a very stable climate, which doesn’t present strong annual amplitudes of temperature. Thereby, the temperature is constantly negative at the top of the Kilimanjaro, what induces that the melting is essentially made by sublimation : ice passes from the solid state to the gaseous one, without passing by the liquid state. If we refer to the studies led since the half of the 19th, the climate change had for consequences to intensify the melting of Kibo ice cap, making spend its surface from 12,06 km² in 1912, to 2,36 km² in 2011. Hence, we decided to study by using the Regional Atmospheric Model (MAR), the evolution of climatic conditions in the region of the Kilimanjaro, over the period 1951-2014. We were thus able to put forward, firstly, that the decrease in cloudiness and precipitation, as well as the increased solar radiation, have played an important role in the melting of these glaciers. On the other hand, we also demonstrated that the NCEP and ERA-Interim reanalyses on Africa are not reliable, and consequently, the model presents difficulties to represent in a correct way the climate in our zone. To finish, we analyzed if we found the El Niño and La Niña events, of which the impact on the East African climate has been shown, in the model outputs.