Recession of Equatorial Glaciers

Download or read book Recession of Equatorial Glaciers written by S. Hastenrath and published by Sundog Pub. This book was released on 2008 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when climate change is on the minds of scientists, policy makers, and the general public, there is a need for careful, objective documentation of the nature and magnitude of the changes that are already occurring. Glaciers on the high mountains of the low latitudes are sensitive indicators of climatic and environmental change. Near the Equator, ice is still found in East Africa, the Ecuadorian Andes, and New Guinea. Explorations over a century have included measurements of precipitation, net balance and ice flow velocity, mappings of areal extent and surface topography, and terrestrial and airborne photography and satellite imagery.Photographs by the author and by others prior to 1980 have been reproduced in two books, but in limited quality and availability. More photography has been conducted since then, in part incorporated into a report on Mount Kenya by the author. The Mountain Club of Kenya, Nikunj Shah and Kazahara Mizuno sent the author additional photographs from Mount Kenya; Konrad Steffen, Georg Kaser, Doug Hardy and Nils Wiklund provided recent pictures from Kilimanjaro, and Bernard Francou provided photos from El Altar, Antisana and Cotopaxi in Ecuador. Bolivar Caceres provided data on recent ice extent in the Ecuadorian Andes. Ian Allison and James Peterson contributed photographs from New Guinea.The almost 200 photographs, maps, and charts from all of the above sources have been compiled into a single comprehensive volume covering the period from the late 1800s to the present. It therefore serves as a one-of-a-kind archival record of the physical extent and appearance of the major glaciers still found in the equatorial zone, some of which could disappear over the next decades.Recession of Equatorial Glaciers: A Photo Documentation belongs in any academic or research library serving the glaciology, geography, and climate science communities.