Come to GeoLunch, Tuesday March 12th, 12:00 – 1:00  Carnegie 219

Pizza and cider to be served while we speak about the Africa’s Glaciers and the secretes they hold in their icy grip.

 

Abstract: Kilimanjaro, Mt. Kenya, and the Rwenzori Mountains are the three locations in Africa that still support glaciers today. Glaciers in the Rwenzori Mountains (on the border between Uganda and the D.R. Congo) were much larger during the global Last Glacial Maximum (~20,000 years ago) and the rocks they left behind tell the story of glacier retreat over time. In this talk, I will present photographs of the modern Rwenzori glaciers, and computer simulations of the past glacier extents. In an effort to understand natural climate variability, we need to understand how glaciers changed over time at different latitudes. My modeling results offer two possible scenarios for how and why glaciers in the tropics changed and what this could mean for the future of these tropical glaciers.