If we don’t slow the warming climate, emperor penguins may be marching toward extinction.
A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) suggests that rising temperatures could be the death of these exquisite animals.
“If global climate keeps warming at the current rate, we expect emperor penguins in Antarctica to experience an 86 percent decline by the year 2100,” lead study author Stephanie Jenouvrier, a seabird ecologist at WHOI, said in a statement. “At that point, it is very unlikely for them to bounce back.”
The fate of the penguins is largely tied to the fate of sea ice, which the birds use as a home base for breeding, feeding, and molting.
The Sally Albright of marine animals, emperor penguins tend to keep house on ice with extremely specific conditions—locked in to the Antarctic shoreline, but close enough to open seawater for access to food.
But as the climate warms, sea ice disappears, robbing the birds of their habitat, food sources, and ability to raise their young.
In an effort to better understand and, fingers crossed, reverse these effects, Jenouvrier and her team combined two existing computer models.
WHOI biologist Stephanie Jenouvrier holds a young emperor penguin during fieldwork in Antarctica. (Photo Credit: Stephanie Jenouvrier / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
The first, a global climate model created by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), projects where and when sea ice would form under different climate scenarios. The second, a model of the penguin population, calculates how colonies might react to changes in that ice habitat.
By combining results from the two, researchers “can start to see how different global temperature targets may affect the emperor penguin population as a whole,” Jenouvrier explained.
The team ran three different scenarios: a future where global temperatures increase by 1.5 °C (the goal set by the Paris climate accord), 2 °C, or a whopping 5 to 6 °C (i.e. no action is taken to reduce climate change).
Under the first, analysts found that only 5 percent of sea ice would be lost by 2100, causing a 19 percent drop in the number of penguin colonies. Sad but not devastating.
Another 0.5 °C higher, though, and those numbers increase dramatically: The loss of sea ice nearly triples, and more than a third of existing colonies disappear, according to the study.
Let’s not even talk about the “business as usual” scenario (which all but ensures the complete loss of colonies).
Jenouvrier’s findings echo those of an international team of researchers, who last month recommended additional measures to conserve one of the most iconic Antarctic species.
Scientists have proposed the “near-threatened” animals’ IUCN status be bumped up to “vulnerable”—i.e. Likely to become endangered if their survival and reproduction rates don’t improve.
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Stephanie Mlot
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