I read an interesting article in UK Newspaper The Guardian about the threatened and fading glaciers on the Rwenzori mountains in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Up until now little was known about the condition of many of the tropical glaciers, but London-based Danish photographer Klaus Thymann recently came back from a micro-expedition in Uganda with the evidence that the 43 glaciers found and named in 1906 are in dire condition AND he predicts that not much time is left before the glaciers will disappear as a result of increased air temperature.
Project Pressure, which is headed by Thymann, is now working with the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) and the Nasa in the US to create the first photographic, interactive “glacier atlas” to capture what the world looked like before the glaciers are gone forever,
“We know the Rwenzori glaciers are not going to last long. They are clearly disappearing fast and may be not much more than accumulated blocks of ice slowly atrophying. I can’t see anything that will stop them disappearing, so what Project Pressure is doing is documenting what is there now,” says hydrogeologist Richard Taylor of University College London, who has studied the Rwenzori icefield and visited the mountains six times.
“This is a last chance to see them. In years to come, the ice up there will be a fairy tale for the people who live [near Rwenzori]. This is the evidence of what was there, the proof. It is very helpful.”
Via: The Guardian
