Week 3_ The Furtwängler Glacier

For week three, I decided to visit the Furtwängler Glacier located in Tanzania near the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. This glacier is an alpine glacier, which means it formed on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro and has been moving downward through valleys. It is a small piece of an icecap that used to crown the summit of Kilimanjaro. This glacier-formed with a process called firnification, which is the process of snow compacting into glacial firn (dense, grainy ice). The glacier is retreating rapidly, but the reason a glacier has lasted as long as it has even with the intense equatorial sun beaming down on it is because of the reflection of the bright white ice. The bright white reflects most of the heat that would typically melt ice, but the black lava rock underneath absorbs the weather, which causes the melting beneath—the melting ice deposits fresh moraine, which is made up of black lava rock. Part of the core was drilled, and scientists discovered bubbly glacial ice, which confirmed the absence of features related to melting and refreezing. There were grooves on the ground from the movement chatter marks that happened from chipping. It will not be too much longer before this glacier is no longer in existence, but it was great to see it while it is still here!