The Varied Faces of East African Glaciers

The diversity of glaciers within this region is often overlooked. Here are some facts:

A sketch of the location of east African glaciers (source: author), including some background information highlighting their differences - an overview of east African glaciers (Young, 1980); information on Mount Kenya (Prinz, 2012), Kilimanjaro (IUCN, 1991), and the Ruwenzori)

What does this all mean? 

The understanding of the diversity of the East African cryosphere is crucial, especially if we are to avoid generalisation when discussing the glacier-climate interactions and their behaviour in the current rapidly changing environment. For instance, due to the elevation of both Mt. Kenya and the Rwenzori being closer to the elevation of the mean regional freezing level, they are more likely to experience sensitivity to air temperatures than the glaciers of Kilimanjaro (Prinz, 2015).

The Disappearing Glaciers of Uganda - Aljazeera

This short video report provides some more context about Uganda's changing climate and insights into its diverse wildlife. However, when talking about the drivers of the disappearance of the Ruwenzori glaciers it only mentions increasing temperatures, and fails to represent other climatic factors.

There is much more to be said about different climatic factors responsible for these changes and the variability of climatic interactions across the East African glaciers, but that will have to wait until my next post.