http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0203-03.htm
Published on Sunday,
February 3, 2002 in the lndependent/UK
Global Warming
Antarctica Becomes Too Hot for the Penguins
by Geoffrey Lean
CAPTION:
"Activists for the environmental group Greenpeace hang a
banner
from a smokestack in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Friday, February 1,
2002.
The banner, depicting a thermometer with President Bush at the
top,
is to bring attention to global warming and the U.S. environmental
policy, to participants in the five-day World Social Forum."
(AP Photo/Douglas Engle)
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 fossilized 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."
© 2002 lndependent
Digital (UK) Ltd
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