The decline of the population of the penguin emperor can be

Emperor populations penguins In Antarctic it can be decreasing faster than the most pessimistic predictions, scientists said after analyzing satellite images of a key part of the continent.

The images, which cover from 2009 to 2024, suggest a 22% decrease in the Antarctic Peninsula, the Weddell Sea and the Bellingshausen Sea, according to researchers from the British Antarctic survey and the University of Southampton, who published their study in nature on Tuesday.

The 16 colonies of the emperor penguins in that part of Antarctica represent a third of the global population. The estimated decrease is compared to an earlier estimate of a 9.5% reduction in Antarctica as a whole between 2009 and 2018.

The researchers now have to do if their evaluation in that region of Antarctica is true for the rest of the continent.

“There is enough uncertainty in this type of work and what we have seen in this new count is not necessarily symbolic from the rest of the continent,” said Dr. Peter Fretwell, the main author of the study, in a statement. “But if so, that is worrying because the decrease is worse than the worst projections we have for emperors this century.”

While an additional analysis is needed, Fretwell told Agnce France-Presse that the colonies studied were considered representative.

Researchers know that Climate change It is promoting losses, but the speed of decreases is a particular cause of alarm.

The heating is thinning and destabilizing the ice under the feet of the penguins in their reproduction areas.

In recent years, some colonies have lost all their chicks because the ice has given way under them, sinking young in the sea before being old enough to cope with the frozen ocean.

Fretwell said new research suggests that the number of penguins has been decreasing since the monitoring began in 2009. That is even before global warming had a great impact on sea ice, which is formed on open waters adjacent to Earth in the region.

But he said that the culprit is likely to be climate change, with heating by promoting other challenges for penguins, such as greater rain or a growing invasion of predators.

“Emperor penguins are probably the clearest example of where climate change really shows its effect,” Fretwell said. “There is no fishing. There is no destruction of the habitat. There is no pollution that is causing their populations to decrease. It is only the ice temperatures in which they reproduce and live, and that is really a climate change.”

The Emperor penguins total approximately a quarter of a million reproductive couples, all in Antarctica, according to a 2020 study.

An emperor baby penguin emerges from an egg that a male remains hot in winter, while the female in a reproductive couple embarks on a two -month fishing expedition. When he returns to the colony, he feeds the breeding regurgiting and then both parents turn to forage. To survive on their own, chicks must develop waterproof feathers, a process that usually begins in mid -December.

New research uses high -resolution satellite images during the months of October and November, before the region immerses itself in winter darkness.

Fretwell said future research could use other types of satellite monitoring, such as radar or thermal images, to capture populations in the darkest months, as well as expand to the other colonies.

He said there is hope that penguins can go further to colder regions in the future, but added that it is not clear “how long they will last.”

Computer models have projected that the species will be close to extinction by the end of the century if humans do not cut their planet heat emissions. The last study suggests that the image could be even worse.

“We may have to rethink those models now with these new data,” Fretwell said.

But he emphasized 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 will probably lose many emperors on the way, but if people change, and if we reduce or turn in our climatic emissions, then we will save the emperor penguin.”

• Penguin
• Climate change
• Antarctica