Africa: Global Warming

[awakening2lite]

Nigeria: 30m Citizens Threatened By Climate Change - Yar'Adua

26 March 2008

Grace Azubuike
Abuja

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has said that over 30 million people from various states of the federation are threatened by climate change which leads to increased degradation of the ecosystem, desert encroachment and deepens poverty of the populace.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 54th ordinary session of the ongoing Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) Council of ministers and preparatory ministerial session of the 12th summit of heads of state and governments in Abuja, the president advocated for more political attention in the development of the LCBC.

The president, who was represented by the minister of foreign affairs, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, added that the commission met some of its resolutions but was distracted by external activities and lost focus on its programmes.

"This project started 30 years ago and Nigeria has made efforts to set a pace but, it cannot do it alone, we are determined to work towards the progress of Lake Chad."

In his goodwill message, the minister of agriculture and water resources, Dr Sayyadi Abba Ruma, stated that with the population of the member countries and increasing economic activities, most of the member countries' basins are rapidly reaching conditions of water stress and inadequacy.

Ruma emphasised that action should be based on good governance, mobilization, financial resources, capacity building, sharing of ideas, significant increase in funding level of water and attraction of private investors investment to attain basin-wide food security, wealth creation, which will contribute to sustainable development of the basin and the African region in general.

Earlier in his address, the executive secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, Engr. Muhammad Sani Adamu, said that contract award have been given for feasibility studies of inter-water transfer from Congo to Lake Chad in order to resuscitate the Lake and restore the ecosystem.

He further disclosed that one of the challenges the commission is facing is the drying up of Lakes and appealed to member states to pay their annual dues to help in tackling the ecological war in the Lake, which have endangered agricultural activities.

source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200803260180.html
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[awakening2lite]

Mt. Kilimanjaro Ice Cap Continues Rapid Retreat

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/11/03/obituaries/03kilimanjaro01/articleLarge.jpg Stephen Morrison/European Pressphoto Agency


Mount Kilimanjaro's top, shown in June, has lost 26 percent of its ice since 2000, a study says.





By SINDYA N. BHANOO
Published: November 2, 2009


The ice atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania has continued to retreat rapidly, declining 26 percent since 2000, scientists say in a new report (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/30/0906029106.full.pdf+html).


Yet the authors of the study, to be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/proceedings_of_the_national_academy_of_sciences/index.html?inline=nyt-org), reached no consensus on whether the melting could be attributed mainly to humanity’s role in warming the global climate.



Eighty-five percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, the scientists said.



To measure the recent pace of the retreat, researchers relied on data from aerial photographs taken of Kilimanjaro over time and from stakes and instruments installed on the mountaintop in 2000, said Douglas R. Hardy (http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/doug/), a geologist at the University of Massachusetts (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_massachusetts/index.html?inline=nyt-org) and one of the study’s authors.



The photographs measure horizontal shrinkage of the ice, and the stakes indicate the reduction in depth. Both are decreasing at the same rate, Dr. Hardy said.



Researchers studying the mountaintop, including those involved in this study, differ (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/science/earth/23CLIM.html) in their conclusions on how much of the melting could result from human activity or other climatological influences.


The lead author of the study, Lonnie G. Thompson (http://www.geology.ohio-state.edu/faculty_bios.php?id=52), a glaciologist at Ohio State University (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/ohio_state_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org), has concluded that the melting of recent years is unique.
In 2000 he extracted deep cylinders of ice from Kilimanjaro’s glaciers and found that the higher layers were full of elongated bubbles — signs that melting and refreezing had occurred in recent years.



There was no presence of the bubbles in the deeper layers of the cores, Dr. Thompson said.



If his dating of the ice core layers is accurate, surface melting like that seen in recent years has not occurred over the last 11,700 years.



But Georg Kaser (http://www.uibk.ac.at/geographie/personal/kaser/), a glaciologist at the Institute for Geography of the University of Innsbruck in Austria, said that the ice measured was only a few hundred years old and that it had come and gone over centuries.
What is more, he suggested that the recent melting had more to do with a decline in moisture levels (http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/the-shrinking-glaciers-of-kilimanjaro-can-global-warming-be-blamed/1RecentarticleinAmericanScientist.) than with a warming atmosphere.


“Our understanding is that it is due to the slow drying out of ice,” Dr. Kaser said. “It’s about moisture fluctuation.”


But Dr. Thompson emphasized that the melting of ice atop Mount Kilimanjaro was paralleled by retreats in ice fields elsewhere in Africa as well as in South America, Indonesia and the Himalayas.



“It’s when you put those together that the evidence becomes very compelling,” he said.


Cabinet to Meet on Mt. Everest


KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Nepal’s cabinet will hold a meeting on Mount Everest to highlight the threat from global warming (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier), which is causing glaciers to melt in the Himalayas, an official said Monday.


The cabinet will meet at the Everest base camp this month, just before an international climate change conference in December in Copenhagen, said Deepak Bohara, the forest and soil conservation minister.


Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and other cabinet members will fly by plane to the 17,400-foot camp, the starting point for mountaineers trying to climb the world’s highest mountain.


Last month, the cabinet of Maldives donned scuba gear and held an underwater meeting to highlight the threat of global warming to that nation, the world’s lowest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/africa/03melt.html