| ABSTRACT: 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. |
| DATA: Download the Kilimanjaro d18O, Ion, and Dust Data from the WDC Paleo Archive
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To read or view the full study, please visit the
Science website. It was published in Science, Volume 298, 5593, 18 October 2002.
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This project was funded by grant ATM-9910172 from the U.S. National Science Foundation's Earth System History Program. |
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Please also note the profile of Dr. Lonnie Thompson and the Byrd Polar Research Center group in the same issue of Science, pp. 518-522. | |
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Contact Us National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 18 October 2002
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