{"title":"Penguin colonies and weather in Admiralty Bay in a colder year","authors":"M. Petry, R. G. Moura, L. Krüger","doi":"10.4322/APA.2014.028","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Climate change will affect many species in the next decades. Antarctic seabirds are of special concern given their dependence on the balance of sea ice-caps. The objective of this paper is to present information about weather and penguin colonies in the last extreme cold summer of 2009/2010. We verified the average temperature in November (beginning of seabird breeding) which was lower than for most years since 1987 with a slight tendency to decline, and thus the number of snow days was also high in relation to the period average, with a tendency to increase in time. The Adelie Penguin has the biggest colony area followed by Chinstrap Penguin, while Gentoo Penguin has the smallest area. As seabirds breed on ice-free areas, the joint effect of lower temperatures and enhanced precipitation in Spring can affect habitat availability for nesting, potentially disrupting reproduction timing and the future breeding population and success.","PeriodicalId":169975,"journal":{"name":"INCT-APA Annual Activity Report","volume":"311 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"INCT-APA Annual Activity Report","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.4322/APA.2014.028","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Climate change will affect many species in the next decades. Antarctic seabirds are of special concern given their dependence on the balance of sea ice-caps. The objective of this paper is to present information about weather and penguin colonies in the last extreme cold summer of 2009/2010. We verified the average temperature in November (beginning of seabird breeding) which was lower than for most years since 1987 with a slight tendency to decline, and thus the number of snow days was also high in relation to the period average, with a tendency to increase in time. The Adelie Penguin has the biggest colony area followed by Chinstrap Penguin, while Gentoo Penguin has the smallest area. As seabirds breed on ice-free areas, the joint effect of lower temperatures and enhanced precipitation in Spring can affect habitat availability for nesting, potentially disrupting reproduction timing and the future breeding population and success.