Mountain Kilimanjaro and Melting Snow乞力马扎罗山!

非洲社会与文化课程论文院系外国语言与文化学院专业英语班级142161103学生姓名苏京学号**********任课教师韩红2015年6月16日Mountain Kilimanjaro and Melting Snow英语专业学生苏京学号1421611082[Abstract]乞力马扎罗山位于坦桑尼亚东北部及东非大裂谷以南约160公里，奈洛比以南约225公，赤道与南纬3度之间，是坦桑尼亚和肯尼亚的分水岭，非洲最高的山脉，也是同时是火山和雪山。

该山的主体沿东西向延伸将近80公里，主要由基博、马温西和希拉三个死火山构成，面积756平方公里，其中央火山锥呼鲁峰，海拔5,895米，是非洲最高点。

乞力马扎罗山素有“非洲屋脊”之称，而许多地理学家称它为“非洲之王”。

该山的主体以典型火山曲线向下面的平原倾斜，平原的高度约海拔900米，山顶终年满布冰雪，但冰川消融现象非常严重。

[Key Words] Mountain Kilimanjaro，introduction，melting snow and iceIn The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Hemingway described the Kilimanjaro Mountain’s ice fields as widest all over the world, great, high and unbelievably white in the sun. Attracted by the description of Hemingway, I think I need to have a good grasp of the Mountain Kilimanjaro.1. The introduction of Mountain Kilimanjaro1.1 LocationKilimanjaro is in Tanzania in east Africa. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world at 5,895 meters above sea level. Kilimanjaro lies within 756 square kilometers, Kilimanjaro National Park. Mountain Kilimanjaro is called the Roof of Africa. Rising 19,340 feet nearly 4 miles into the sky and it is the highest point on the entire African continent. Located in northeastern Tanzania in east Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro is about equal distant from Cairo to the north and Cape Town to the south, around 220 miles south of the equator. The majestic snow-capped peaks of Kilimanjaro have long captured the world's imagination. Thousands people have traveled to Tanzania to climb the mountain, or to view its famous glacier-covered peak. One such visitor, the American author Earnest Hemingway, even wrote a story about it. In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Hemingway described the mountain's ice fields as widest all over the world, great, high and unbelievably white in the sun.1.2 PeakKilimanjaro is an extinct volcano, with 3 peaks: Kibo, Shira and Mawenzi. Kibo is the highest one about 5895 meters in the center, Mawenzi is lower about 5,149 meters and east of Kibo, but more technical. The 3rd peak Shira is less obvious, but it's also an extinct volcano. It is about 3,962m.The volcanoes, whose lava fields overlapped and partially obliterated each other, began erupting approximately 2 million years ago. And the peaks of Kibo and Mawenzi are joined by a broad saddle 7 miles long.1.3 HistoryThere are many versions of where the name Kilimanjaro came from, but a few of the possible meanings are, "Mountain of Greatness", Mountain of Whiteness", and "Mountain of Caravans" which all derive from Swahili. The natives of the region sometimes warned of the spirits of the mountain.One of the first records of Mount Kilimanjaro was by Ptolemy in the second century AD. He was a Greek cartographer and astronomer who wrote of the land to the south and told of a snow covered mountain. He had already circumnavigated Africa by then. The mountain is not mentioned for the next thousand years until the twelfth century when the Chinese talked of the mountain. In April of 1848 two missionaries became the first Europeans to set sight on it. The missionaries were Rebmann and Bwana Kheri. Up until then it had been somewhat of a myth or legend, because no one thought there would be snow at the equator.1.4 WeatherBecause of Kilimanjaro’s great height, the mountain influences its own weather. Winds incoming from the Indian Ocean are deflected upward by the slopes and drop their moisture as rain and snow. This moisture results in a variety of vegetative zones that contrast dramatically with the savanna grasses and semi desert scrub on the surrounding plains. The mount’s lower slopes, probably once forested, have been cleared for the cultivation of coffee, corn, and other crops. At higher elevations approximately 9800 feet lay a belt of tropical rain forest that gives way to grasslands and moorlands. This belt, in turn, is replaced by high-altitude desert near 14 500 feet. At the highest elevations is a zone of permanent ice and snow that is responsible for the name Kilimanjaro, which in Swahili means "the mountain that glitters."Mount Kilimanjaro has five major ecological zones, each approximately 3,280 feet in altitude. Each zone is subject to a corresponding decrease in rainfall, temperature and life as the altitude increases. At the beginning of the climb, at the base of the mountain, the average temperature is around 27°C to 32°C. From there, the temperatures will decrease as you move through Mount Kilimanjaro's ecological zones. At the summit, Uruhu Peak, the night time temperatures can range between 18°C to -26°C. This make Kilimanjaro weather very dynamic and you should always be prepared for wet days and cold nights.The Local Weather conditions on Kilimanjaro can be somewhat unpredictable to say the very least. Precipitation varies from 2000mm per year in the rainforest belt to less than100mm per year in the summit zone. Similarly, daily temperature fluxes are a typical when compared to normal weather cycles, and are largely dependent on Altitude. Due to its proximity to the equator, Mount Kilimanjaro does not experience wide temperature changes from season to season. Instead, the temperatures on Mount Kilimanjaro are determined more so by the altitude and time of day. At higher altitude you have fog and drizzle, and slowly but surely the moisture will creep into your clothes, your gear, your bones.Bad weather on Kilimanjaro not only makes for a miserable trek and ruins the photos; most importantly it simply makes the climb twice as hard! Most climbers end up sleeping in every item of clothing they possess, including hats and gloves on the night prior to summiting. Ironically enough however, prior to making the final push towardsUhuru Peak, individuals are advised to don a pair of shorts and a T-shirt beneath their heavily padded climbing gear. Prepare for the worst case scenario, and then enjoy that everything turns out much easier than expected.1.5 FaunaYou have to be very lucky to see much in the way of fauna on Kilimanjaro. The more exotic fauna of East Africa does occasionally venture onto the mountain. It just doesn’t happen very often, with most animals preferring to be somewhere where there aren’t 35,000 people marching around every year. So in all probability you will see virtually nothing during your time on the mountain beyond the occasional monkey or mouse. Nevertheless, keep your mouth shut and your eyes open and you never know. Fauna as one nears the summit of Kilimanjaro seems to become less and less. At an Altitude of 4000 to 5000 meters, the alpine desert exists as the ultimate climatic antithesis of Weather Conditions. In this icy furnace, temperatures reach a scorching heat of between 35 to 40 degrees during the daytime, and then plummet to well below freezing point at night. Down the mountain the forest is home to a number of small antelope, which are mostly solitary or live in very small groups. Some of the antelope found are the Common Duiker, Abbot’s Duiker, Red Duiker, Bushbuck, and Klipspringer. The Duiker is fairly shy creatures and quite small which makes them very difficult to spot. They do sometimes range onto the moorland and grow thicker coats if they live at higher altitudes.1.6 FloraThere are five major zones of fauna and flora, which are associated with specific altitude levels, and all have distinct characteristics. Due to the fact that the temperature falls about 1°C for every 200m and rainfall also decreases with an increase in altitude these zones are spaced at about 1000m intervals and there is a distinct cross over from one zone to the next. This band of vegetation completely surrounds the mountain and extends from 1800m to 2800m. It is the area that receives the most rainfall, which is about 2000mm a year and supports the greatest amount of life. Some of the more prolific trees are camphor, pod carpus, fig and other large trees. The undergrowth contains many giant ferns, as well as flowers such as impatiens, with their typical pitcher shape. Kilimanjaro is unique in that there is no bamboo zone at the end of the forest, as is the case with most other African mountains. This is probably due to the fact that Kilimanjaro is the driest of these mountains and the transition from forest to heath is strikingly sudden. Above the forest belt the porous soils and lower rainfall result in much sparser vegetation with semi-desert conditions prevailing above 4000m. The lower slopes are heavily cultivated, in particular those to the south which receive plenty of rainfall.2. Melting snow on Mountain Kilimanjaro2.1 The research of melting snowThe snows of Kilimanjaro are rapidly disappearing and will be gone by 2033, predicts the most detailed analysis yet of the iconic glaciers gracing Africa's highest peak. In addition to shrinking in area, Kilimanjaro's glaciers are thinning from the top down, says Ohio State University's Lonnie Thompson, lead author of the new study. "They're being decapitated," he says. "In fact, they're probably not really glaciers anymore.They're remnants of another climate.” In 2000, Thompson and his team made the first modern measurements of Kilimanjaro's ice. Thompson drilled cores from the three glaciers ringing the summit, estimating that the ice bodies date back at least 11,700 years. The team then anchored stakes in bedrock at the bottom of the drill holes and has since used the stakes to measure the thickness of the ice. One of the small summit glaciers, called the Furtwangler, lost about half its thickness — nearly five meters — between February 2000 and February 2009. At that rate, the 4.6-meter-thick Furtwangler will be gone in another decade, Thompson estimates. Other glaciers on Kilimanjaro will survive longer, but they too will disappear between 2022 and 2033, Thompson's latest estimates suggest. A second summit glacier, the southern ice field, thinned 24% between 2000 and 2007. Thinning accounts for about half of the ice loss on the mountain, says Thompson, with retreat of the ice from the glaciers' edges accounting for the other half.2.2 The reason of melting snow2.2.1 DeforestationDeforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forest land use such as arable land, urban use, logged area or wasteland. Historically, this meant conversion to grassland or to its artificial counterpart, grain fields; however, the Industrial Revolution added urbanization.Generally this removal or destruction of significant areas of forest cover has resulted in a degraded environment with reduced biodiversity. In developing countries, massive deforestation is ongoing and is shaping climate and geography. Deforestation results from removal of trees without sufficient reforestation; however, even with reforestation, significant biodiversity loss may occur. There are many causes, ranging from slow forest degradation to sudden and catastrophic wildfires. Deforestation alters the hydrologic cycle, altering the amount of water in the soil and groundwater and the moisture in the atmosphere. Forests support considerable biodiversity, providing valuable habitat for wildlife; moreover, forests foster medicinal conservation and the recharge of aquifers.The impact that local deforestation might have on the snowcap and glaciers atop Mount Kilimanjaro are being calculated at The University of Alabama in Huntsville using regional climate models and data from NASA satellites.The first piece of that research, which looked only at the month of July, found that deforestation is changing weather patterns around the mountain but not (at least in July) at the peak, according to Dr. Udaysankar Nair, a research scientist in Huntsville’s Earth System Science Center.The current glaciers of Kilimanjaro, made famous by an Ernest Hemingway short story in 1936 and a movie released in 1952 are almost 12,000 years old. At their maximum, the mountain's glaciers and ice cap covered about 400 square kilometers and reached from the summit to the surrounding plain more than 9,000 feet below. About 16,000 years ago, during the most recent ice age, Kilimanjaro's glaciers covered up to 150 square kilometers.A tiny fraction of that ice cap still exists. Surveys in the 1880s estimated that glaciers covered about 20 square kilometers on the mountain. From 1912 to now, the glacierarea on Kilimanjaro has decreased from 12 square kilometers to less than two.Nair and doctoral student Jonathan Fairman, a NASA Earth system science fellow, are studying the effects of deforestation on weather patterns in a 2,000-square-mile area around the mountain.They decided to start by looking at July, during the summer "dry" season. That is when weather around the mountain is influenced least by large-scale regional weather systems from the Indian Ocean.July rainfall on the north side of the mountain has decreased at higher elevations in response to deforestation. There is little precipitation at the peak during July and the models indicate that hasn't changed in response to deforestation."Kilimanjaro is an isolated mountain, so under normal circumstances most of the local air flow goes around the mountain," Nair said. "When you cut down forests you reduce surface roughness, which increases wind speed at higher elevations on the windward slopes. That faster wind over steep upper slopes causes more intense cloud formation and precipitation up the side of the mountain." Nair and Fairman are extending their model runs to include the fall and spring rainy seasons, when the dominant weather rolls in from the Indian Ocean."We need to look at the complete annual cycle before we understand the impacts that deforestation is having on the mountain peak," Fairman said.Early results suggest that deforestation around Kilimanjaro might be having a noticeable impact on how quickly glaciers and ice are melting on the mountain, although it isn't clear from preliminary data modeling whether that impact is positive or negative."When we look beyond the summer dry season, our results suggest that regional deforestation has the potential to either mitigate or enhance large scale climate change," said Nair. "In some places, like Costa Rica, deforestation clearly adds to the effects of climate change. For Kilimanjaro, we expect our extended model simulations to reveal whether deforestation will worsen or mitigate large scale changes." According to the result of the research, the influence of deforestation is visible2.2.2 Global WarmingNo one，regardless of race, religion or nationality, can deny that the world we live in is becoming increasingly intolerable because of the effects of global warming. People around the world may feel that the climate has been getting steadily warmer and warmer in recent years.According to many experts, even greater impacts are still on the way. With the development of economy, more and more greenhouse gases are being discharged into the air. CO2 makes up about 70% of the greenhouse gases, which is considered to be one of the greatest causes of global warming. The side effects of global warming are alarming. A warmer global climate melts the ice caps, raising sea levels. What is more, it disturbs weather patterns, causing droughts, severe storms, hurricanes. People suffer a lot from disasters relevant to global warming.There are numerous causes for this problem. On one hand, human-related emissions of carbon into the atmosphere is causing, and will in the future cause, significant global warming according to the theory. On the other hand, the lack of knowledgeabout the importance of protecting environment hinders the solving of the problem. Global warming is definitely having an effect on Mount Kilimanjaro. Africa’s highest mountain, and one of its most famous natural landmarks, is losing its ice. In fact, at the current rate, it will have no ice left by 2020.82% of Kilimanjaro’s ice has already melted since 1912. The most alarming thing is that a third of this has melted in the last 12 years. Over the next 10-15 years, we’re going to see this snowcapped mountain turn a different color!Scientists suspect that less snow on Kilimanjaro during the rainy season decreases the surface reflectiveness, leading to higher heat absorption. This in turn, results in more melted ice.Trekkers often comment about witnessing large chunks of ice falling off as they make their way up or down the mountain.The latest expedition added more chilling evidence: At three places on the margin of the northern ice field, a 50-meter high wall of ice has retreated between 4.8 and 5 meters since 2002; A massive hole that reaches through the ice down to the bedrock has formed in the middle of the Furtwangler glacier, as well as in the northern ice field, two of the ice bodies on the mountain. Those holes should split the Furtwangler glacier in two within the next six months; and the northern ice field in the next two years. The thickness of the ice fields is waning rapidly. The northern ice field has lost 2 meters of ice from the surface, the Furtwangler has lost more than 3 meters, and the southern ice fields have lost between 4 and 5 meters. Thompson said that the loss of more than 3 meters from the surface of the Furtwangler is serious since that entire glacier was only 9 meters thick in 2000 at their previous drill site. "There has been no accumulation of new ice forming on any of those ice fields since 2000," he said. The five years of warming have taken a toll on the southern ice fields atop Kilimanjaro. That's an enormous amount of ice lost. "With the new aerial photographs, we will be able to calculate for the first time, not only the area of ice loss, but also the volume of water lost, since the last photos were taken in 2000. Tanzania's tourist trade depends in large part on international visitors. Showcased by Ernest Hemingway's short story, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, ice fields so near the equator are a major attraction, and if they melt, perhaps, will lose the tourism. But the impact on local water supplies is likely to be even more serious. The population living around the base of the mountain depends on melting water flowing from the glaciers, and precipitation in the rainforests that cover its flanks to supply the springs that provide water for both drinking and irrigation. What aren’t clear, Thompson said, are the proportion of the water that comes from each source and the age of the spring and well water currently being consumed. If most comes from the rainforests, then the impact is lessened, but if glaciers provide the larger portion, the loss of the ice fields could be catastrophic. The idea of using a several mile long blanket to cover the mountain so sunlight can reflect off the ice caps is absurd. The event of the melting ice caps, which may have occurred from human interference, is a natural process that should be left alone and not be interfered with. This event, if left alone, may answer a lot of questions and benefit humans. One question that might be answered is the question dealing with the relationship of global warming and the melting ice caps of Mountain Kilimanjaro. Ifglobal warming is the reason for the melting, this event can be a lesson to many of us that a change is needed. Sometimes it takes a terrible event to make us open our eyes. This is what I know about Mount Kilimanjaro.References：[1] Ernest Hemingway, 2013, The Snows of Kilimanjaro,The People's Literature Publishing House[2] Mount Kilimanjaro National Park, 2014, Tanzania National Parks[3] Kilimanjaro National Park, 2012, World Heritage Centre, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization[4] Decken ,1833–1865, The Conchologists’ Newsletter, No.162, pp. 204–211课程论文评分表。