Global Warming and Kilimanjaro.

Taken from New Scientist Dtd 25 Sept. 2010.
"Fewer trees below, less ice on top.
Aggresive tree-felling on mount Kilimanjaro could be partly to blame for its vanishing ice cap. (I don't like the use of the word 'partly').
The ice on Kilimanjaro's summit has shrunk to just 15 per cent of its extent in 1012, leading campaigners to hold it up as a symbol of climate change. But other factors are also at play. for instance, the air at the summet is getting drier. reducing the snowfall that replensishes the ice and reflects solar radiation.
Now Nicholas Pepin from the University of Portsmouth, UK and colleaugues say deforestation could be an important part of the puzzle.
Between september 2004 and July 2008, the team took hourly humitdity and temperature readings at 10 elevations on the mountain.
these revealed that daytine heating generates a flow of war, moist air up the mountainside (Global and Planetary Change, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2010.08.001).
Trees play an important role here by providing moisture through transpiration. Pepin suggests that extensive local deforestation in recent decades has likely reduced the flow of moisture. depleting the mountains's icy hood.