In a warming world, emperor penguins march to extinction

Heaviest highly dependent on fate of sea ice, say researchers

Boston: A warming climate may cause emperor penguins to go extinct by the end of this century, according to a study which cautions that a ‘business as usual’ approach towards climate change could ensure the complete loss of the birds native to the Antarctic.

An international team of researchers, including those from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, said that the emperor penguins — the tallest and heaviest of all species of penguins — are highly dependent on the fate of sea ice, which they use as a home base for breeding and molting.

The study, published in

the journal Current Biology, noted that if the earth continues to heat up at the current rate, melting sea ice in Antarctica, the emperor penguins may experience an 86 per cent decline by the year 2100 — a point after which they are unlikely to bounce back to a healthier population.

As part of the study, the researchers combined two existing computer models.

The first was a global climate model created by the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in the US which offered projections of where and when sea ice would form under different climate scenarios.

The second was a model of the penguin population which calculated how colonies might react to changes in that ice habitat, they said.

According to the study, the penguins build their colonies on ice with extremely specific conditions, requiring that it is locked in to the shoreline of the Antarctic continent.

The ice should also be close enough to open seawater to give the birds access to food for themselves and their young, the researchers said. With a warming climate this kind of sea ice will gradually disappear, robbing the birds of their habitat, food sources, and ability to hatch chicks, the study said. The penguin model has been in the works for more than a decade. The researchers ran the model on three different scenarios.