Study
Projected continent-wide declines of the emperor penguin under climate change
Jenouvrier, Stéphanie; Holland, Marika; Stroeve, Julienne; Serreze, Mark; Barbraud, Christophe; Weimerskirch, Henri; Caswell, Hal
Nature Climate Change, 2014
Demographic data from a long-studied emperor penguin colony were combined with sea-ice projections from climate models and applied to all known colonies, projecting population trajectories through 2100 under emissions scenarios.
- Studied in
- Aptenodytes forsteri
- Sample size
- population projections for all known colonies
All modelled colonies decline by 2100 under the projected sea-ice trajectories, with the global population projected to fall substantially and most colonies classified as quasi-extinct. Emperor penguins depend on fast ice of a particular extent and duration: too little and breeding platforms fail, too much and foraging trips become unsustainable.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Emperor penguins are highly vulnerable to projected sea-ice change across their entire range, not merely at the margins.
How NatureHQ reads it
The dependence is specific enough to be worth stating precisely, because it is not simply "ice good". The birds need fast ice that lasts long enough for a chick to fledge and sits close enough to open water for parents to feed. Both too little and too much are failure modes, which is why the projections do not simply track warming. This is a modelling study and inherits the uncertainty of the climate projections beneath it; what it establishes is the shape of the dependence rather than a date.
- Demographic rates are extrapolated from one intensively studied colony to all others.
- Sea-ice projections carry substantial model spread, and regional Antarctic sea ice has behaved unexpectedly.
- Behavioural responses such as colony relocation onto ice shelves are only partly incorporated.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
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Published by: Nature PortfolioPublished in a Nature Portfolio journal.
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