The Melting Mountain.(Mount Kilimanjaro)(Brief Article)

When Wilbert Minja talks, people listen. In the Tanzanian village of Liyasongoro, 1,700 meters up the south slope of Mount Kilimanjaro, his neighbors call him Mzee--Swahili for "wise old man." Minja has lived here for more than 60 years, a very long life by African standards, and lately he talks about how worried he is. The weather is all wrong, he says: "Rain falls when it should not, and does not come when it should." He recalls how new settlers used to flock to the mountainside, lured by its rich soil and abundant fresh water. Now they are abandoning their failed homesteads. The mountain streams are running dry, and the dusty ground has turned barren. "I see many changes," says Minja. "And many of them are bad."

Ask about global warming, and the old man says he doesn't understand the term. But he and the 1 million or so other inhabitants of Kilimanjaro's flanks are getting a firsthand education in the phenomenon and its human impact. Government water experts say the mountain's annual rainfall has declined every year since 1984. Two years ago the drought got so bad that Minja's crops failed; for the first time in his life, he had to buy food to survive. Last year his crop fared better but was still thin. Farther uphill, past the farms and villages, the rain forest that covers the mountain's midsection is receding, consumed by illegal logging and wildfires in the dry heat. And above it all, at the top of Africa's highest peak, the snows of Kilimanjaro are vanishing.

It's happening at a frightening rate. Dave Sprissler and David Luber found out for themselves last year when they set out for the 6,000- meter summit, relying on a map just three years old. The two Americans planned to climb the southern route by hiking up the Heim glacier. It turned out to be impossible. In the short time since the map had been drawn, the glacier had shrunk by half. Its leading edge had broken off and melted, leaving a towering wall of ice to block the way. That kind of thing happens a lot lately, says Thomas Meela, a professional guide who has been to the top more than 100 times. Every time he goes up, he finds less ice and more bare rock. More than once his parties have been forced to turn back and try a different ascent. "I'm not sure I believed in global warming before I came here," says Sprissler. "I do now."

Lonnie Thompson is another believer. The Ohio State University geology professor has been studying glaciers and climate change for more than 20 years. Last year he published the findings from research he has done on Kilimanjaro. According to Thompson's data, some 30 percent of the mountain's ice cap has disappeared since 1979. Fully 82 percent has melted since the glacier was first mapped in 1912. "If the glacier continues to melt at its current rate, it will have completely disappeared by 2020," says Thompson. "And that's a conservative estimate."

The rain forest is in similarly desperate shape. Here, scientists can't distinguish the effects of global warming from the damage directly caused by humans. Subsistence farmers, their crops stunted by the fickle weather, have turned to the woodlands for income. "Once they're inside the forest, they cut everything indiscriminately," says Claudia Hemp, a zoologist ...