Equatorial Glaciers?—Yeah!
Think equator, the place on earth where each day has 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night, no winter or summer seasons, just a tropical paradise on earth. Except for the higher elevations, where there are glaciers. Yes, real natural ice right there on the ground courtesy of Mother Nature. 
Equatorial Glaciers
Let’s look at the glaciers near the earth’s equator and you’ll find some on each continent that straddles the equator, i.e. Asia, Africa, and South America. They are:
- Carstensz Glacier, near the peak of Puncak Jaya, Indonesia, island of New Guinea;04°05’S, 137°11’E; elevation ~4,700 m.
- Furtwängler Glacier (Mt. Kilimanjaro), Tanzania, Africa; 03°04.3’S, 37°21’E; elev. ~5,700 m.
- Cayambe Glacier, Ecuador, South America; 0°00’N, 78°00’W; elevation ~5,000 m.
If you want to find them on Google Earth, just copy the bold coordinates (e.g., 04°05’S, 137°11’E) into the search field and it will take you right there. The screenshot (above) is taken from the satellite imagery of the Furtwängler Glacier, as available on Google Earth on Feb. 26, 2015. The information on the bottom of the image (not shown) says “Image © 2015 Digital Globe.”
Of course, climate alarmist prophecies predicted the Furtwängler Glacier to have long disappeared by now. After all, according to Wikipedia, its size was only six hectares in the year 2000. Surely, the additional umpteen ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere since then should have made it disappear entirely by now. What’s the hold-up?
Then there are more glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro too, like the Rebmann Glacier on the opposite side of the mountain and even larger than the Furtwängler Glacier . You can visit them all, guided tour packages are available from several outfits, like http://www.climbmountkilimanjaro.com/about-the-mountain/glaciers/ and https://www.gadventures.com.
Perhaps you are wondering why there are any glaciers near the equator to begin with? Isn’t it all tropical paradise with shimmering white-sand beaches and some steaming jungle interiors? Obviously, the answer is NO and the reason is the third dimension.
The Third Dimension
That’s the height or elevation above sea level and it is much more critical than the latitude of your position on the globe. If you have flown in a modern airplane you’ll probably know what I mean. The little flat screen in front of you allows you to not just to watch movies but check up on your current location and the outside temperature. At typical cruising altitudes of 35,000 ft. (11 km) the temperature is around MINUS 40 F (-40 C). It does not matter whether it’s hot or cold at sea level, at an elevation of 5 km or so the temperature is around freezing and it decreases rapidly the higher you go.
Therefore, you are not likely to see much liquid water at those elevations. It is either frozen or invisible vapor and seasonal shrinkage of such high altitude glaciers and snowfields is by sublimation, the process of direct change from the solid to the vapor state. However, this process is not restricted to high altitudes.
You can observe it just as well in low elevation areas that have snow cover in late winter or early spring when the air temperature is still well below freezing. Then the vapor pressure of the “water” molecules in the snow is greater than that in the air and causes the snow to volatilize directly without prior melting.
Even so, there is a large amount of energy required to volatilize the ice. That energy comes from the sun via radiation, from the air and the remaining water, ice, or snow. How much energy? Let’s do a simple calculation of the water cycle.
Water Cycle
Worldwide, the energy flux between solid or liquid water and its vapor is gigantic.
You can get an idea of that from the total world river flow, estimated to 1,000,000 cubic meter (m^3) each second; the Amazon River alone has a flow of 200,000 m^3/s. That adds up to 3×10^13 m^3 per year, or 30,000 cubic kilometer (km^3) per year. Add to that the amount of rainfall on the ocean surface and the amount evaporated from the land surface and the number is more like 100,000 km^3 or 25,000 cubic miles of water that gets evaporated in a year.
Now you know what drives the climate on earth. It is not CO2. It is the water cycle.
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