Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum, Emperor Penguin populations have exploded nasa.gov
Antarctic sea ice reached a record high in June, with 2.1 million square kilometres more than the long term average. Source: US National Snow and Ice Data Centre. In the Mail on Sunday, journalist and climate skeptic David Rose says: "The levels of Antarctic sea-ice in June hit an all-time high - confounding climate change computer models which say it should be in decline..."
Nearly twice as many emperor penguins inhabit Antarctica as was thought, a satellite census has shown. If I write what everyone else is focussing what is the point, in such news that is positive is suppressed. The idea is always to create sensationalism and havoc. In 2012 UK, US and Australian scientists used satellite technology to trace and count the iconic birds, finding them to number almost 600,000.
Their census technique relies in the first instance on locating individual colonies, which is done by looking for big brown patches of guano (penguin poo) on the white ice.High resolution imagery is then used to work out the number of birds present.It is expected that the satellite mapping approach will provide the means to monitor the long-term health of the emperor population.
The big brown patches of guano are unmistakeable on the white landscape
"If we want to understand whether emperor penguins are endangered by climate change, we have to know first how many birds there are currently and have a methodology to monitor them year on year," said Peter Fretwell from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
"This study gives us that baseline population, which is quite surprising because it's twice as many as we thought, but it also gives us the ability to follow their progress to see if that population is changing over time," he told BBC News.
The scientists have reported their work in the journal PLoS One.
Their survey identified 44 key penguin colonies on the White Continent, including seven that had not previously been recognised.
Although finding a great splurge of penguin poo on the ice is a fairly straightforward - if laborious - process, counting individual birds in a group huddle is not, even in the highest resolution satellite pictures.This means the team therefore had to calibrate their analysis of the colonies by using ground counts and aerial photography at some select sites.
Peter Fretwell explains how his team counted penguins, he & colleagues totted 595,000 penguins, which is almost double the previous estimates of 270,000-350,000 emperors. The count is thought to be the first comprehensive census of a species taken from space. Excerpts from a BBC report Even 'Sea ice around Antarctica is growing, and it's a scientific puzzle. Global warming computer models are confounded as Antarctic sea ice hits new record high in 2014.'
This follows news in June 2014 from scientists at the University of Illinois that the area covered by sea ice surrounding Antarctica hit a record high on 29th June, with about two million square kilometres in June more ice compared to the long term average. |
