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Climate models and ongoing monitoring studies predict the remaining glaciers in Africa are predicted to disappear by the middle of the 21st Century. These will likely be the only glaciers present on the continent for some tens of thousands of years, until the next global ice age. This paper considers the implications of the shrinking cryosphere in Africa for the surrounding environment and local communities. Glacier retreat will give rise to significant and irreversible downstream effects on East African mountain landscapes in future decades, including impacts on water resources; slope stability and geohazards; ecosystems and ecosystem services; and human socioeconomic and cultural activities and heritage. This foresight study is the first to discuss future environmental impacts of deglacierization in East Africa, and this is framed around understanding the interconnections that exist between physical and human landscape elements in mountainous regions. A key outcome is the identification of elements of mountain systems that are most sensitive to environmental disturbance as a result of global warming, such as long-term water availability and processes that give rise to geohazards, and highlighting the need for management and mitigation of these varied impacts. • Glaciers in East African mountains are rapidly melting. • These will be the only glaciers present in Africa until the next global ice age. • Glacier retreat will result in significant and irreversible downstream environmental effects. • Most affected will be regional water resources, geohazards, and ecosystem services. • Change in mountain landscapes will impact on socioeconomic and cultural activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a review of Late Quaternary climatic changes and glacier variability in the Himalaya and East Africa, focusing on the role of Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM), East African monsoon, and Westerlies monsoons. Multi-proxy studies which are based on five different archives (lakes, peat bogs, speleothems, marine sediments, and ice cores) including sixty-six records from India and nearby regions, particularly in the Himalaya and in addition to six archives from the equatorial Eastern part of Africa encompasses with high-resolution published and unpublished records for the last 50 ka BP. The proxy data is discussed towards REMO-ESM model Coupled Model Intercomprasion Project phase 5 (CMIP5 Project) results. Our results indicate that both Western Himalaya and East Africa had undergone mega-droughts from ~17.0–15.0 ka BP, and precipitation had increased during the Early Holocene (10.0–7.0 Ka BP) during the time span when the Westerlies dominated regions. The model results suggest that the Westerlies monsoon has significantly contributed to the Northwestern Himalaya and somewhat to a lesser degree to the Western Himalaya and lower solar insolation in the winters did support the glacier advance during the LGM. The time series from the proxy data are compared with glacier fluctuations in different valleys to understand the response of the aforementioned monsoon system including other forcing factors which drive these variabilities. The review results indicate that the Westerlies was the main driver of the climate and glacier fluctuations in Northwestern Himalaya during the Late Quaternary. The Early and Late Holocene glacier fluctuation was mainly controlled by Westerlies precipitation in Northwestern Himalaya and the ISM controlled the glacier fluctuations in the Western Himalaya during Late Quaternary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]