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There are 1）countless reasons why some 40，000 2）trekkers are drawn to Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro each year. There’s the 3）glory of climbing the world’s highest 4）freestanding mountain. The wonder of standing atop Africa’s highest peak， with the great continent at your feet. And the reward of seeing Kili’s 5）majestic 6）summit 7）glaciers， some of the only 8）equatorial glaciers found on Earth. And， in a shocking study published in Science magazine in 2002， the glaciers were supposed to completely disappear between 2015 and 2020. As in， right now.
The good news： glacier experts and 9）ecologists now believe the 11，700-year-old ice is nowhere near 10）extinction in the next 5 years， or even in the next 15. The bad： the glaciers are still continuing to shrink. New figures suggest that they will disappear by 2040.
I saw the great glaciers myself when I climbed Kili last July， and they looked just as Ernest Hemingway famously described them in his book The Snows of Kilimanjaro注： “As wide as all the world， great， high， and unbelievably white in the sun...” It was hard for me to understand how these giants could ever melt away. They’re too big， too solid， too impressive.
Reports on why the glaciers are disappearing have varied， with many blaming 11）widespread global warming. But interestingly， their 12）diminishing size has little to do with human 13）interference. The glaciers are lessening because of a natural and 14）inevitable climate change that occurred in the first half of the 19th Century（before cars or 15）major pollution） and no longer brings as much rain to the top of Kili. It’s a change that simply made the 16）current conditions unsuitable for equatorial glaciers.
As a climber， I had a hard time imagining any sort of melt happening atop Kilimanjaro. The cold and dryness is so extreme that it 17）cracks your lips and fingertips， despite my wearing five layers of clothing. Pole-pole， the 18）Swahili phrase for “slowly， slowly”， was said over and over again by our guides； each step up was more tiring than the last.
What could 19）reverse the glaciers’ disappearance？ Unfortunately， not much under human control. Only major snowfall could fill the 20）bare ground between the ice and slow its disappearance， and the last time that kind of snowfall happened was during the first half of the 19th Century. “The loss of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers is inevitable even without the effect of climate warming，”said Georg Kaser， a 21）glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. That is， “unless 22）considerable changes in the Indian Ocean occur within the next 10 to 20 years， causing repeated strong and 23）abundant rainy seasons over East Africa.” The likelihood of this happening is uncertain.
The good news： glacier experts and 9）ecologists now believe the 11，700-year-old ice is nowhere near 10）extinction in the next 5 years， or even in the next 15. The bad： the glaciers are still continuing to shrink. New figures suggest that they will disappear by 2040.
I saw the great glaciers myself when I climbed Kili last July， and they looked just as Ernest Hemingway famously described them in his book The Snows of Kilimanjaro注： “As wide as all the world， great， high， and unbelievably white in the sun...” It was hard for me to understand how these giants could ever melt away. They’re too big， too solid， too impressive.
Reports on why the glaciers are disappearing have varied， with many blaming 11）widespread global warming. But interestingly， their 12）diminishing size has little to do with human 13）interference. The glaciers are lessening because of a natural and 14）inevitable climate change that occurred in the first half of the 19th Century（before cars or 15）major pollution） and no longer brings as much rain to the top of Kili. It’s a change that simply made the 16）current conditions unsuitable for equatorial glaciers.
As a climber， I had a hard time imagining any sort of melt happening atop Kilimanjaro. The cold and dryness is so extreme that it 17）cracks your lips and fingertips， despite my wearing five layers of clothing. Pole-pole， the 18）Swahili phrase for “slowly， slowly”， was said over and over again by our guides； each step up was more tiring than the last.
What could 19）reverse the glaciers’ disappearance？ Unfortunately， not much under human control. Only major snowfall could fill the 20）bare ground between the ice and slow its disappearance， and the last time that kind of snowfall happened was during the first half of the 19th Century. “The loss of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers is inevitable even without the effect of climate warming，”said Georg Kaser， a 21）glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. That is， “unless 22）considerable changes in the Indian Ocean occur within the next 10 to 20 years， causing repeated strong and 23）abundant rainy seasons over East Africa.” The likelihood of this happening is uncertain.