Antarctic Ice Changes Already Problem For Penguins; Emperors Most Threatened, Adelies Next

[hatrack]

Shifting sea ice around Antarctica is already disrupting penguin colonies as the world's climate warms, according to a new report by a team of polar scientists. The researchers looked at the complex relationship between emperor and Adelie penguins and their changing habitats and studied how a projected temperature increase in coming decades of 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 Fahrenheit, might affect the way the animals build nests, find food and raise their young.

Emperor penguins - the largest of all the awkward birds that thrive only in cold climates - are the most severely threatened by oncoming changes, the report says. The birds live, lay eggs and raise chicks on solid sea ice, but when that "fast ice" thins and breaks up as temperatures rise, their habitat shrinks, the report notes.

But the slightly smaller and more agile Adelie penguins are also being forced to shift their nesting grounds when increased snowfalls cover the rocky terrain where they build their nests and have raised their young for millennia, the researchers say. At the very least, the report states, the penguins' range stands to be compacted, "increasing susceptibility to the effects of warming."

The study was led by David Ainley, a penguin specialist with a Los Gatos ecological consulting firm who spent 10 months on the snowbound continent. The research was supported primarily by the National Science Foundation and published by the Ecological Society of America.

EDIT

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/12/MN2C1CDP5M.DTL

[kestrel91316]

1. It's a good thing those emails proved that global warming is a complete hoax.

The penguins are imagining things. There's nothing wrong with the ice cover in Antarctica.