"While mainstream science has focused on polar ice to find clues about climate change, Lonnie Thompson has been risking his career and life on the highest and most remote ice caps along the equator. In the process he has changed the science of climatology." "Scientist and expert climber Mark Bowen joined Thompson's crew on several expeditions, including an eye-opening ascent in East Africa that revealed why the snows of Kilimanjaro will be gone in fifteen years. Bowen also includes an account of the dangerous Huascaran ascent where Thompson's discovery of an unknown type of glacial ice revealed how pieces of the global climate puzzle fit together. Bowen also takes us deep inside retreating glaciers from China and the Tibetan Plateau across South America's Andes and to Africa."
"Thin Ice explains what Thompson's hard-won data tell us about climate systems that have long perplexed the scientific community. Even more important, we learn what the equatorial ice reveals about global warming and the earth's probable future."--Jacket.