Africa’s highest mountain, Mt. Kilimanjaro rises over a layer of clouds late afternoon on December 13, 2009. According to a recent study by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS) the ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 2007 was 85 percent smaller than the one that covered its plateau in 1912. The mountain’s ice cover shrank about 1 percent a year from 1912 to 1953, a rate that has accelerated in recent years. From 1989 to 2007, that rate jumped to 2.5 percent a year. Since 2000, the plateau’s three remaining ice fields have shrunk by 26 percent, scientists found If current conditions persist, climate change experts say, Kilimanjaro’s world-renowned glaciers, which have covered Africa’s highest peak for centuries, will be gone within the next two decades. World leaders struggled to nail… 5 ENV KEN AFP/AFP – ROBERTO SCHMIDT/ras/acg (Photo credit should read ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)
