New Study Shows Emperor Penguins May Be Heading towards Extinction
27.01.2009 - Water & Oceans, Ice & Snow, Flora & Fauna, Other, Antarctic
The Emperor Penguin might be heading for extinction, according to a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on January 26th, 2009. This species of penguins - the largest one in the world and the only one breeding during winter on Antarctica - might be severely impacted by global warming before the endo f the century.
The study was conducted by a team of five researchers from various institutes led by Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and included researchers from the Association Amicale des Expeditions Polaires Françaises, the Institut Paul Emile Victor, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The team focused not on average climate conditions as the key variable, but on fluctuations that occasionally reduce the amount of available sea ice, as the emperor penguins rely on the sea ice for breeding and feeding. Using sea ice models developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report, the team predicted that shrinking sea ice has between a 40 and 80% chance of leading to as much as a 95% decline in population by the end of the 21st century (It's important to keep in mind that fluctuations in the area of ice cover led to a 50% population decrease in emperor penguins in the 1970s).
While this study only focused on the emperor penguin colony in Terre Adélie at the moment, research on the species might soon be extended to all parts of the continent.
