By Kristen Pope
Standing four feet tall and weighing up to 100 pounds, (click here) emperor penguins are the largest penguin species in the world. They are also incredibly vulnerable to climate change.
A recent study published in Global Change Biology by Stephanie Jenouvrier, associate scientist and seabird ecologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and colleagues found that if humans are able to limit Earth’s temperature increase to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, there is hope emperor penguins will survive. But with “business as usual,” the charismatic penguins made famous for their starring role in the 2005 documentary March of the Penguins are almost certainly doomed....
The Chinstrap Penguins were believed to replace the Emperor Penguin in the climate crisis scenarios held by qualified Antarctica scientists. In the early 2000s these scientists were already measuring and preparing for the idea the Emperor Penguin would become extinct. They grappled with these issues because they care about the topic of their studies. So, to them the loss of the Emperor from Antarctica was the loss of an iconic bird in the coldest climate in the world. It was after all, their work. Their work would bring the honest and truthful news back to civilization and reaction would be to improve the emissions of greenhouse gases. Now, they wait for the crash of populations of birds that could be the foretelling of far worse episodes in other areas of Earth.
February 12, 2020By Alan Taylor
Ueslei Marcelino, (click here) a photojournalist with Reuters, recently accompanied a team of scientists on an expedition to Antarctica, where they used drones and manual techniques to count various populations of chinstrap penguins. Reuters reports: “The number of chinstrap penguins in some colonies in Western Antarctica has fallen by as much as 77 percent since they were last surveyed in the 1970s, say scientists studying the impact of climate change on the remote region.” They also quote Steve Forrest, a conservation biologist: “The declines that we’ve seen are definitely dramatic. Something is happening to the fundamental building blocks of the food chain here. We’ve got less food abundance that’s driving these populations down lower and lower over time and the question is, is that going to continue?” Last week, an Argentinian base in Antarctica reported the highest temperature ever recorded on the continent: 64.94 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 degrees Celsius).
