Africa’s remaining tropical glaciers are rapidly disappearing as greenhouse gas emissions drive global warming. In the Rwenzori Mountains, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, the retreat of glaciers is endangering local communities’ water security, livelihoods, and culture warns the NGO Project Pressure on the inaugural World Day for Glaciers. The Stanley Plateau glacier in the Rwenzori Mountains pictured in 2022 and 2024. Since 2020, the glacier lost nearly 30% of its mass. Image courtesy of Project Pressure. Since 2012, Klaus Thymann, director of Project Pressure, has led expeditions to the Rwenzori Mountains to track the demise of their glaciers. The pace of decline is “staggering,” he says. Mount Baker and Mount Speke have both lost their glaciers already, and the remaining glaciers on Mount Stanley are increasingly fragmented. Surveys found that the Stanley Plateau glacier lost nearly 30% of its surface area between 2020 and 2024. Klaus Thymann has led multiple expeditions to the Rwenzoris since 2012, witnessing a “staggering” rate of glacier retreat in that short time. Image courtesy of Project Pressure. “The pure basics of glaciers is that it has to be cold,” says Thymann. “As the melting point rises, they simply vanish and that’s what’s happening in the Rwenzori Mountains.” In recent years, as more and more greenhouse gas emissions have entered the atmosphere, the melting point — the elevation at which temperatures are too warm to form and preserve glacial ice — has crept ever upward.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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