Antarctica's Emperor Penguins Face Extinction With No Breeding Ground. Thanks To Global Warming

The future of Emperor Penguins, the largest penguin species in the world is looking increasingly bleak after it emerged that thousands of chicks might have been drowned in the sea after their breeding ground collapsed.

A new study has found that Halley Bay colony in the Weddell Sea which is said to be the second-largest colony of emperor penguins collapsed in 2016, killing more than 10,000 chicks.

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What is even worse is that the and the population has not recovered since as virtually no hatching has been reported from there in the next three years.

According to researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) the Halley Bay colony was the second largest in the world, with the number of breeding pairs varying each year between 14,000 ¨C 25,000; around 5-9% of the global emperor penguin population is all but destroyed.

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They have found that the failure to raise chicks for three consecutive years is associated with changes in the local sea-ice conditions as Emperor penguins need stable sea-ice on which to breed, and this icy platform must last from April when the birds arrive, until December when their chicks fledge.

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After analyzing satellite images the researchers have found that in 2016, after a period of abnormally stormy weather, the sea-ice broke up in October, well before any emperor chicks would have fledged.