Near Extinction of Emperor Penguins Predicted by 2100
According to research based upon sea ice models from the IPCC report, Antarctica’s iconic Emperor Penguins could face extinction by the end of the century due to habitat loss.
By comparing observations spanning 43 years of population dynamics against models which project the declining levels of Antarctic sea ice, the study predicts that the giant penguins will be too slow to adapt to changes wrought by global warming.
The startling prediction is being called a conservative estimate by researchers, who claim that the data has as much as a four-in-five chance of being accurate. This number is particularly high because individual Emperor Penguins are long-lived and, as a result, biologically slow learners. Thus, they are unlikely to shift their breeding patterns fast enough to match the rapidly changing climate.
