Abstract
Abstract. Glaciers on Kilimanjaro are unique indicators for climatic change in the tropical midtroposphere of Africa, but their disappearance seems imminent. A key unknown is their present ice thickness. Here, we present thickness maps for the Northern Ice Field (NIF) and Kersten Glacier (KG) with mean values of 26.6 and 9.3 m, respectively, in 2011. In absence of direct measurements on KG, multitemporal satellite information was exploited to infer past thickness values in areas that have become ice-free and therefore allow glacier-specific calibration. In these areas, KG is unrealistically thick in the existing consensus estimate of global glacier ice thickness.
Highlights
Tropical glaciers at high elevations are unique climate indicators for the tropical midtroposphere (e.g., Kaser, 2001; Mölg et al, 2009)
The consensus estimate produces a similar mean ice thickness of 21.5 m for the Northern Ice Field (NIF), which is in fair agreement with the observations by Bohleber et al (2017), considering that the consensus was not informed by local thickness observations (Farinotti et al, 2019)
The ice thickness in the steeper western areas of the NIF and Credner Glacier (CG) has increased by a factor of 2
Summary
Tropical glaciers at high elevations are unique climate indicators for the tropical midtroposphere (e.g., Kaser, 2001; Mölg et al, 2009). The modern glacier recession on Kilimanjaro has been well documented, and mapping approaches have shown that from an estimated ice extent of 11.4 km in 1912, only 1.76 km remained in 2011, constituting a severe 85 % reduction in glacier area (Cullen et al, 2013). A recent effort was made to reconstruct the distributed ice thickness for all glaciers outside Antarctica and Greenland using a consensus of up to five models (Farinotti et al, 2019). This estimate generated ice thicknesses for the Northern Ice Field (NIF) and Kersten Glacier (KG) using ensembles of two and three models, respectively. The recently observed separation of KG into two fragments (e.g., Landsat 5 scene on 22 August 2011; image courtesy of the US Geological Survey) is not in agreement with the high thickness values found in the consensus estimate
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