Emperor Penguin populations In Antartica can decrease faster than the most pessimistic predictions, scientists said after analyzing the satellite images of a key element on the continent.
The images, extending from 2009 to 2024, suggest a drop of 22% in the Antarctica peninsula, the Weddell Sea and the Bellingshausen Sea, according to researchers from the British Antarctic survey and the University of Southampton, which has published its study in nature Tuesday.
The 16 Emperor penguin colonies in this part of Antartica represent a third of the world’s population. The estimated drop compared to an earlier estimate of a reduction of 9.5% to Antarctica as a whole between 2009 and 2018.
Researchers must now see if their assessment in this Antartica region is true for the rest of the continent.
“There is a lot of uncertainty in this type of work and what we have seen in this new count is not necessarily symbolic of the rest of the continent,” said Dr. Peter Fretwell, the main author of the study, in a press release. “But if this is the case – it is worrying because the decline is worse than the projections the worst cases we have for emperors this century.”
Although a more in-depth analysis is necessary, Fretwell told Agency France-Press that the colonies studied were considered representative.
Researchers know that climate change Discovers the losses, but the speed of the drops is a particular cause of alarm.
Getting is to lighten and destabilize the ice under the feet of penguins in their reproductive ground.
Sergio Pitamitz / VW Pics / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
In recent years, some colonies have lost all their chicks because the ice has given way below, plunging newborns into the sea before being old enough to face the icy ocean.
Fretwell said the new research suggests that the number of penguins has decreased since the start of surveillance in 2009. It is even before global warming has a major impact on sea ice, which forms over the land adjacent to the land in the region.
But he said that the culprit is still likely to be climate change, warming leading other challenges for penguins, such as higher precipitation or the growing encroachment of predators.
“Emperor penguins are probably the clearest example of the place where climate change really shows its effect,” said Fretwell. “There is no fishing. There is no destruction of the home. There is no pollution that reduces their populations. It is only the temperatures of the ice on which they reproduce and live, and it is really climate change.”
Emperor penguins have about a quarter of a million breeding pairs, all in Antarctica, according to a 2020 study.
A baby Emperor Penguin emerges from an egg kept warm in winter by a male, while the female in a reproductive pair embarks on a two -month -old fishing expedition. When she returns to the colony, she feeds the newborn by regurgitating, then the two parents recover. To survive alone, chicks must develop waterproof feathers, a process that generally starts in mid-December.
The new research uses high -resolution satellite images during the months of October and November, before the region was plunged into winter darkness.
Fretwell said future research could use other types of satellite surveillance, such as radar or thermal imagery, to capture populations during the darkest months, as well as extend to other colonies.
He said that there is hope that the Penguins could go further south towards cooler regions in the future, but added that it is not clear “how long they will last there.”
IT models have planned that the species will be close to extinction by the end of the century if humans do not reduce their planet heating emissions. The latest study suggests that the image could be even worse.
“We may have to rethink these models now with this new data,” said Fretwell.
But he pointed out that there was still time to reduce the threat to penguins.
“We have this really depressing image of climate change and populations that fall even faster than we thought, but it’s not too late,” he said. “We are probably going to lose a lot of emperor penguins along the way, but if people change, and if we reduce or overthrow our climatic shows, then we will save the Emperor Penguin.”