WASHINGTON -- The snows of Kilimanjaro may soon be gone.

The African mountain's white peak -- made famous by writer Ernest Hemingway -- is rapidly melting, researchers report.

Some 85 percent of the ice that made up the mountaintop glaciers in 1912 was gone by 2007, researchers led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University report in today's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And more than a quarter of the ice present in 2000 was gone by 2007.

"The fact that so many glaciers throughout the tropics and subtropics are showing similar responses suggests an underlying common cause," Mr. Thompson said in a statement.

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