CLIMATE CHANGE IN RWENZORI MOUNTAINS KASESE WESTERN UGANDA

 

CLIMATE CHANGE IN RWENZORI MOUNTAINS

Uganda is experiencing significant impacts of climate change, which include changing weather patterns, drop in water levels, and increased frequency of extreme weather events like floods, as well as drought, whose social economic impacts make communities very vulnerable.

Glaciers that exist at the summit of the Rwenzori Mountains are very sensitive to changes in climate. Over the last century, dramatic increases in the burning of fossil fuels by industrialised countries have raised the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

Rwenzori Mountains
The Rwenzori Mountains (Figure 1) comprise an uplifted block of crystalline rocks (e.g., gniess, amphibolite, granite and quartzite) that rose from within the western rift in the late Pliocene to divide palaeolake Obweruka and thereby create present-day Lakes Albert and Edward (Taylor and Howard, 1998). The highest peak in the range, Margherita on Mount Stanley, has an elevation of 5108 metes above sea level. With remarkable prescience (or tremendous help from early geographers), Claudius Ptolemy wrote "... the Mountains of the Moon, whose snows feed the lakes, sources of the Nile." (cited in Osmaston and Pasteur, 1972). Indeed, meltwaters from the Mountains of the Moon (Rwenzori Mountains) supply alpine rivers such as the Mubuku (Uganda) and Luusilubi (Democratic Republic of Congo) that, in turn, discharge into Lake Albert, a source of the White Nile, via the Semliki river or a more circuitous route that includes Lakes George and Edward. The snowcap on the Rwenzori Mountains is also at the centre of the traditional belief system of the BaKonzo who have long lived in the foothills of the Rwenzoris (Alnaes, 1998). Snow, "Nzururu", is the 'father' of the BaKonzo deity, "Kitasamba". The area now occupied by the Rwenzori Mountains above an approximate elevation of 1700 metres above sea level was gazetted as a national park in 1991. Rwenzori Mountains National Park was made a World Heritage Site in 1994.