Antarctic emperor penguin colonies suffered extreme breeding failures in 2022 due to sea ice loss, highlighting the immediate risk of global warming. Immediate action is needed to alleviate further disastrous effects.
Emperor penguin colonies experienced unprecedented breeding failure in an area of Antarctica where there was total sea ice loss in 2022. The discovery supports forecasts that over 90% of emperor penguin colonies will be quasi-extinct by the end of the century, based upon present international warming patterns.
In a new study published just recently in the journal Communications Earth & & Environment, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey went over the high possibility that no chicks had made it through from 4 of the five recognized emperor penguin nests in the central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea. The scientists taken a look at satellite images that revealed the loss of sea ice at reproducing websites, well before chicks would have developed water resistant plumes.
Emperor penguins depend on stable sea ice that is securely attached to the shore ( land-fast ice) for the majority of the year, from April through to January. Once they reach their picked reproducing site, penguins lay eggs in Antarctic winter season from May to June. Eggs hatch after 65 days, but chicks do not fledge till summer season, between December and January.
Antarctic Sea Ice Crisis
At the beginning of December 2022, the Antarctic sea ice extent had matched the previous all-time low set in 2021. The most severe loss was seen in the main and eastern Bellingshausen Sea area, west of the Antarctic Peninsula where there was a 100% loss of sea ice in November 2022.
Lead author of the study, Dr. Peter Fretwell, stated:
” We have actually never ever seen emperor penguins fail to reproduce, at this scale, in a single season. The loss of sea ice in this region throughout the Antarctic summer made it very not likely that displaced chicks would make it through.
We understand that emperor penguins are highly vulnerable in a warming climate– and current clinical evidence recommends that severe sea ice loss events like this will end up being more frequent and widespread.
Given that 2016, Antarctica has seen the four years with the least expensive sea ice extents in the 45-year satellite record, with the 2 least expensive years in 2021/22 and 2022/23. Between 2018 and 2022, 30% of the 62 known emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica were affected by partial or total sea ice loss. It is tough to instantly link particular severe seasons to environment modification, a longer-term decline in sea ice level is anticipated from the existing generation of environment models.
Comparisons reveal a colony on sea ice at Smyley Island between 10 October 2022 and 10 December 2022. Credit: Satellite images is from European Commission Copernicus SENTINEL-2
Understanding Penguin Migration and Breeding Patterns
Emperor penguins have actually formerly reacted to occurrences of sea ice loss by transferring to more stable sites the list below year. Researchers state that this method wont work if sea ice habitat throughout a whole region is affected.
Emperor penguin populations have actually never ever undergone large-scale hunting, habitat loss, overfishing or other regional anthropogenic interactions in the modern age. Unusually for a vertebrate types, climate modification is thought about the just major aspect influencing their long-term population change. Current efforts to anticipate emperor penguin population patterns from projections of sea ice loss have painted a bleak photo, showing that if present rates of warming continue, over 90% of nests will be quasi-extinct by the end of this century.
The five nests of penguins studied were all found in the last 14 years utilizing satellite images– Rothschild Island, Verdi Inlet, Smyley Island, Bryan Peninsula and Pfrogner Point. All 5 nests had been shown to go back to the same area each year to breed, with only one previous circumstances of breeding failure at Bryan Peninsula in 2010.
Scientists now routinely use satellite images to discover and monitor emperor penguin colonies, as the brown spots of the birds guano stands apart clearly versus the plain white of ice and snow. The team used images from the European Commissions Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite objective, which has continually kept an eye on the location in Antarctica because 2018.
Emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) breed on sea ice throughout the Antarctic winter. Credit: Doug Allan, British Antarctic Survey
The Ramifications of Sea Ice Depletion
Over the past 7 years, sea ice around Antarctica has decreased substantially. By the end of December 2022, sea ice degree was the most affordable experienced in the 45-year satellite record. In the Bellingshausen Sea, the home of the penguin nests in this research study, sea ice didnt start to re-form until late April 2023.
Considering that then, the discrepancy from the standard has intensified: as of August 20, 2023, the sea ice level was 2.2 million km2 lower than the 1981-2022 median (17.9 million km2) significantly surpassing the record winter season short on August 20, 2022, of 17.1 million km2. This missing area is larger than the size of Greenland, or around 10 times the size of the United Kingdom.
Dr. Caroline Holmes, a polar climate scientist at BAS, said:
” Right now, in August 2023, the sea ice extent in Antarctica is still far below all previous records for this time of year. In this duration where oceans are freezing up, were seeing locations that are still, remarkably, largely ice-free.
Year-to-year changes in sea ice degree are linked to natural climatic patterns such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the strength of the southern hemisphere jet stream, and local low-pressure systems.
Well need years of targeted observations and modeling to understand exactly just how much the current conditions are being affected by these phenomena and by natural ocean irregularity. The recent years of tumbling sea ice records and warming of the subsurface Southern Ocean point strongly to human-induced worldwide warming exacerbating these extremes.”
Antarctic sea ice extent for each year from 1979 to 2023 (satellite-era; NSIDC, DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS). 2023 is revealed using a red line. (Updated 8/19/2023.) Credit: Credit Zachary Labe
The Urgent Call to Action
Climate designs reveal a decline in Antarctic sea ice both under present and projection human co2 emissions.
Dr. Jeremy Wilkinson, a sea ice physicist at BAS, commented:
” This paper significantly exposes the connection in between sea ice loss and ecosystem annihilation. Environment modification is melting sea ice at a worrying rate. It is likely to be absent from the Arctic in the 2030s– and in the Antarctic, the four least expensive sea ice extents taped have actually been because 2016.
It is another alerting sign for mankind that we can not continue down this path, politicians need to act to lessen the effect of environment change. There is no time left.”
For more on this research study, see Emperor Penguins Face Breeding Meltdown in Antarctica.
” Record low 2022 Antarctic sea ice caused devastating breeding failure of emperor penguins” by Peter T. Fretwell, Aude Boutet and Norman Ratcliffe, 24 August 2023, Communications Earth & & Environment.DOI: 10.1038/ s43247-023-00927-x.
Emperor penguins are reliant on stable sea ice that is securely connected to the shore ( land-fast ice) for the bulk of the year, from April through to January. Between 2018 and 2022, 30% of the 62 recognized emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica were impacted by overall or partial sea ice loss. Current efforts to predict emperor penguin population trends from forecasts of sea ice loss have actually painted a bleak image, revealing that if present rates of warming persist, over 90% of nests will be quasi-extinct by the end of this century.
In the Bellingshausen Sea, the home of the penguin nests in this study, sea ice didnt start to re-form until late April 2023.
Antarctic sea ice extent for each year from 1979 to 2023 (satellite-era; NSIDC, DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS).