Immortalised in Ernest Hemingway’s 1936 story The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the snowcapped summit of Africa’s highest mountain is one of the most vivid examples of global warming in action. Scientists have found that 85% of the ice that covered the mountain in 1912 has now melted, and more than a quarter of the ice present in 2000 is no longer there. Some predict that Tanzania’s legendary glaciers could disappear entirely within two decades.