Climate change in East Africa: a numerical simulation from the 100 years of terminus record at Lewis Glacier, Mount Kenya.

Secular climatic change in East Africa is reconstructed from the terminus record of Lewis Glacier, Mount Kenya, documented since 1893. The short-time-step numerical model developed for this study consists of climatic and ice dynamics segments. The climatic segment directly computes the effect on the net balance of change in the four forcings: precipitation, albedo, cloudiness, and temperature. The flow segment calculates the glacier response to net balance variation. A decrease in the annual precipitation on the order of 150mm in the last quarter of the 19th century followed by a secular air temperature rise of a few tenths of a degree centigrade during the first half of the 20th century, together with associated albedo and cloudiness variation, constitute the most likely cause of the Lewis Glacier wastage during the last 100 yr.-from Author