Mount Kilimanjaro's glaciers are shrinking, but the cause may not have anything to do with global warming.

UW climatologist Philip Mote said glaciers shrinking from global warming are found in middle to high latitudes. Since Kilimanjaro is located at such a low latitude, he said global warming may not be the cause.

Mote co-authored an article in American Scientist with expert Georg Kaser from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Kaser has been studying the mountain for almost 20 years.

"My goal in this article was to synthesize several scientific papers and try to tell the story accurately but for a more general audience," Mote said.

Kaser's research suggests the glaciers have been shrinking since the turn of the 19th century, which he says has little to do with increasing temperatures in the troposphere.

Many factors contribute to Kilimanjaro's glacial loss, primarily sublimation–, where a solid changes directly into a gas.

Another main factor is less ice accumulation.

Other explanations focus on the structure of the mountain itself. They include the glaciers' shape, as well as energy balances being driven by solar radiation, which causes sublimation.

Mote explained two possible ways global warming could impact a high-latitude mountain but show little impact on one in the tropics.

"First, rates of warming are very different in different places. ... The summit of Kilimanjaro has probably warmed a little bit in the last 20 years, but not much before that, whereas middle- and high-latitude land areas have warmed several degrees in the last 50 years," Mote said. "Second, warming from 31 F to 33 F can melt ice; warming from 20 F to 22 F cannot. This is why the effects are so different."

Some skeptics believe this is further proof against the case for global warming, while others praise it as an act of honesty.

Mote points to Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, as a possible cause for the false belief.

"It was an honest mistake based on the assertions of a respected scientist," Mote said.