Satellite images show a gruesome slaughter of emperor penguins in climate-change-ravaged Antarctica when sea ice melted under bird colonies last year, leaving helpless chicks drowning in cold water. 2022 Antarctic spring may be worst ever for grown-ups emperor penguinsinhabitants of the icy continent. When sea ​​ice broke Colony after colony was devastated as chicks suffocated or froze to death under their feet at unprecedented speed, too small to survive in the icy waters.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) tracked the tragedy in satellite images and have now shared their findings in a new study.

“Emperor penguins are having a particularly bad year this year,” Peter Fretwell, a remote sensing scientist at BAS and lead author of the study, told Space.com. “Reproductive successes were really affected by the lack of sea ice.”

Fretwell has been studying distant emperor penguin colonies using satellite imagery for the past 15 years. The tallest of all penguin species, these majestic birds live in the harshest conditions in the world. Soil. Adapted to temperatures as low as minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius), penguins breed on sea ice, where they live in colonies of hundreds of individuals. Fretwell and his team had previously witnessed how sea ice loss could affect these colonies. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, a large colony in Halley Bay lost nearly all of its chicks as warmer-than-normal temperatures destroyed sea ice.

“Emperor penguins have a unique breeding cycle and they breed in the Antarctic winter, not the summer,” Fretwell said. “It needs sea ice, and sea ice needs to stay stable from April to December because when it lays its eggs and the chicks hatch, it needs a stable platform to live on.”

Covered only with fluffy hairs, penguin cubs cannot swim or catch food until they have developed a waterproof outer shell. This usually happens in December, about three months after the chicks hatch. Until then, the chicks are totally dependent on their caring parents to feed them and huddle together on the floating ice to stay warm while their parents fish. If the ice under the colony breaks too early at the beginning of the season, the chicks stand no chance. They suffocate or freeze to death.

Sea ice in the Bellingshausen Sea in West Antarctica had completely melted by December 2022, before the emperor penguin cubs were old enough to survive in cold water (Image: Copernicus/British Antarctic Survey)

“This has happened to many colonies this year,” Fretwell said. “There’s a lot more this year than we’ve seen before.”

Satellite images taken by the European Earth observation satellite Sentinel-2 showed that all colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea in West Antarctica lost almost all of their offspring.

“We have maybe 5,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs in this region,” Fretwell said. “There must be 5,000 to 10,000 chickens there. There was a place where they survived, but they still only had about 200 chicks.”

Most emperor penguin colonies are known only from satellite imagery, as the majestic birds inhabit the most difficult and inaccessible places. Scientists are able to track these colonies thanks to the brown spots left by penguin excrement on the untouched ice. Researchers can even distinguish adult birds, thanks to state-of-the-art satellites that provide around 12 inches (30 centimeters) of resolution.

The fear that scientists witnessed last year is probably just the tip of the iceberg; because there are so many smaller, less visible animal species that depend on sea ice for survival and reproduction. These species appear to have been equally affected by the record sea ice loss that hit the continent in the spring and summer of 2022 and 2023. All of these species are likely to have tough years ahead.

“Our models show that in a scenario where climate change continues as it is now, we would lose 90% of the colonies. [імператорських пінгвінів] until the end of the century,” Fretwell said.

Scientists are already preparing for a new year full of disasters. After hitting an all-time low in February this year, sea ice off the coast of Antarctica has failed to recover as the continent enters the winter months, well below seasonal averages at an unprecedented low.

Over the years, Antarctica appeared to defend itself against progressives. climate changeIts northern counterpart has visibly destroyed the Arctic for a long time. In recent years, the effects of a warming climate have crossed the ice cap covering the South Pole, raising concerns about irreversible tipping points.

The record low levels of sea ice for years have not only harmed Antarctic fauna, but are also a bad sign for the continent’s glaciers, which are becoming more and more fragile each year. The destruction of the Antarctic ecosystem will be felt worldwide through rising sea levels and changes in ocean currents, making the planet more vulnerable to further warming. Source