Emperor penguins have failed to breed on a large scale, warning again! Research claims that climate change causes sea ice loss in Antarctica. Emperor penguins | Climate change | Antarctica
Will emperor penguins become extinct?
Researchers have once again issued warnings about climate change and its ecological threats: Emperor penguins have failed to breed in four out of five habitats.
"This is the first recorded large-scale breeding failure of emperor penguins," said a latest research paper published in the international academic journal "Communications Earth and Environment" on the night of August 24th.
Previously, they had reported similar reproductive failure events. But at that time, we only focused on one location. In Harley Bay of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica, due to the disappearance of local sea ice since 2016, emperor penguins have relocated their breeding grounds to the Dawson Lanton Glacier, 85 kilometers south.
Previously, biologists warned that under the influence of climate change, emperor penguins will face serious extinction risks in the next 30 to 40 years.
In the latest published paper, Peter Freitwell and colleagues from the UK Antarctic Survey monitored the breeding of emperor penguins in five habitats using satellite images, namely Rothschild Island, Verde Island, Smiley Island, Brian Coast, and Cape Frogner.
The situation is not optimistic. Satellite images show that only the emperor penguin chicks on Rothschild Island have successfully molted. The molting of chicks in the other four habitats failed. In the ice and snow, failure to molt may mean death. Emperor penguin chicks do not have waterproof feathers before molting.
The stable connection of sea ice to land between April and January each year is an important guarantee for the successful breeding and molting of emperor penguins. But in the spring of 2022, the sea ice area in Antarctica hit a historic low and continued for a whole year thereafter.
Researchers believe that the regional reproductive failure of emperor penguins is clearly related to the large-scale contraction of sea ice range caused by climate change.
Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00927-x