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Mount Kilimanjaros ice fields, Tanzania
Threat: Global warming
Chosen by: Worldwatch Institute
The massive pure white ice fields that Ernest Hemingway captured in his short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro are literally disappearing. In 2002, Lonnie Thompson, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University, released a study that predicted these fields would be wiped out completely between 2015 and 2020 as a result of global warming. Data from the study show that 82% of the ice fields melted between 1912 and 2000. Other researchers have also predicted their demise.