Furtwängler Glacier

Furtwangler Glacier is located near the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The glacier is named after who, with Siegfried König, formed the fourth party to ascend to the summit of Kilimanjaro in 1912.

The glacier is a small remnant of an ice cap that once crowned the summit of Kilimanjaro. Almost 85 percent of the ice cover disappeared from October 1912 to June 2011. In 2013 it was estimated that at the then-current rate, most of the ice would disappear by 2040 and "it is highly unlikely that any ice body will remain after 2060".



Furtwängler Glacier is ephemeral, existing continuously only since about 1650 CE, which corresponds with very high levels in Kenya's Lake Naivasha and the beginning of the Maunder Minimum. Between measurements in 1976 and 2000, the area of this glacier was cut almost in half, from 113,000 m2 to 60,000 m2. By 2018 the size had shrunk to 11,000 m2. In 2022 it was thought that the glacier would cease to exist by 2023 at a rate of loss of 2,524 m2 per year.

During fieldwork conducted early in 2006, scientists discovered a large hole near the center of the glacier. This hole, extending through the 6 m remaining thickness of the glacier to the underlying rock, split the glacier in two by 2007.