- Penguins are starting to desert parts of Antarctica
because
the icy wastes are getting too hot.
-
- The numbers of adelie penguins on the Antarctic peninsula
the most northerly part of the frozen continent are falling as global
warming takes hold. And experts predict that, as the climate change
continues,
they may abandon much of the 900-mile-long promontory altogether.
-
- The archetypal "tuxedoed" species like the
cold even more than other penguins. And the peninsula has been warming
up faster than almost anywhere else on earth, with temperatures increasing
at least five times faster than the world average. Scientists believe this
is disrupting their food supplies.
-
- Global warming is also causing them grief in another
of their strongholds, the Ross Sea. Two giant icebergs have broken off
the Antarctic ice sheet and are blocking the way from their breeding
colonies
to their feeding areas. As a result they have to walk 30 miles further
to get food no small matter when they can manage only one mile per hour.
And, on the other side of the continent, thousands of emperor penguin
chicks
drowned near Britain's Halley base after the ice broke up early, before
they had learned to swim.
-
- Like miners' canaries, the dinner-jacketed penguins of
Antarctica are providing an early warning of danger to come. For global
warming is heating up the frozen continent faster than the rest of the
world, and the penguins are among the first to feel the effects.
-
- Flightless, and so unable to escape like other birds,
they are affected by what happens both on land and sea. And, because they
are easy to spot and count, they provide an early indication of what may
be happening to other species.
-
- They are feeling the heat most strongly on the Antarctic
peninsula, which juts out from the polar land mass towards South America.
Studies of air temperatures around the world over the past half-century
suggest that this is one of the three areas on the planet along with
north-western
North America and part of Siberia warming up fastest. The British
Antarctic
Survey says flowering plants have spread rapidly in the area, glaciers
are retreating, and seven huge ice sheets have melted away.
-
- As the peninsula has warmed up, the numbers of adelie
penguins have been dropping. Scientists suspect that the rising
temperatures
affect the small fish and other marine animals on which they feed, though
they are not yet sure how.
-
- Professor Steven Emslie, of the University of North
Carolina,
believes that if the warming goes on the penguins "would continue
to decline in the peninsula, and may completely abandon much of it".
Studies of fossilised remains that he has carried out near Britain's
Rothera
base show that the numbers of the penguins have sharply declined during
warmer periods in prehistory.
-
- On at least one occasion, the decline in the peninsula
was marked by a rapid increase in the penguins in the Ross Sea more than
2,000 miles away. But in recent months global warming has been causing
them trouble there too. Researchers for the US National Science Foundation
said that one colony of adelies at Cape Royds will "fail totally"
this year. And scientists at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography add
that a colony of emperor penguins at Cape Crozier has also failed to raise
any chicks.
-
- Global warming also threatens the food supplies of
emperor
penguins. When there is less ice in the sea, populations of krill a staple
in their diet fall.
-
- Despite all this, penguins are not in danger of
extinction;
there are millions of them still in Antarctica and one species the
chinstrap
penguin seems to be thriving in the warmer weather. But they still provide
a warning. In the words of the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature, the world's leading conservation body: "Things happening
to penguins are a foretaste of things to come."
- http://news.independent.co.uk
|
