Halley Bay Emperor Penguin Colony

Assembled from 43 blocks · 1 evidence · 54 related

1. Story
2. A large emperor penguin colony on the fast ice of the eastern Weddell Sea, long regarded as one of the most stable in Antarctica and monitored from the nearby British Antarctic Survey station. From 2016 it failed almost completely: the landfast ice it breeds on broke out before the chicks had fledged, and it did so again in the following seasons, with satellite imagery showing thousands of chicks lost. Numbers at the neighbouring Dawson-Lambton colony rose over the same period, which is evidence of relocation rather than of simple loss and is the reason the episode is scientifically interesting rather than merely grim - it showed that emperors will move, and it showed the timescale on which a colony can cease to exist. It is the clearest documented case of a sea-ice event removing a vertebrate breeding population.
3. Knowledge
4. Antarctica
5. Sea Ice
6. Halley Bay Emperor Penguin Colony
7. Connections
8. Sea Ice
9. Antarctica
10. The Halley Bay emperor colony fails and does not recover
11. Polynya
12. Arctic Amplification
13. Antarctic Krill (Euphausia superba)
14. Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus)
15. Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri)
16. Halley Bay Emperor Penguin Colony
17. The continuous satellite sea-ice record begins
18. A long-term decline in krill density is linked to winter sea ice
19. The Arctic summer minimum drops far below anything previously observed
20. The lowest Arctic sea-ice extent in the satellite record
21. The Halley Bay emperor colony fails and does not recover
22. The emperor penguin is listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act
23. Antarctic sea ice reaches a record low, a year after the previous one
24. Arctic Ocean
25. Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC)
26. Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri)
27. Halley Bay Emperor Penguin Colony
28. The Antarctic Treaty (1959)
29. McMurdo Station
30. Vostok Station
31. Cook crosses the Antarctic Circle
32. Antarctica is sighted - by whom is disputed
33. Amundsen reaches the South Pole
34. Scott reaches the South Pole and finds he is second
35. The International Geophysical Year puts twelve nations on the ice at once
36. The Antarctic Treaty is signed at Washington
37. The continuous satellite sea-ice record begins
38. Vostok records minus 89.2 degrees Celsius
39. Antarctic sea ice reaches a record low, a year after the previous one
40. The Madrid Protocol becomes open to a review conference
41. Southern Ocean
42. Evidence
43. Satellite imagery shows near-total breeding failure at the Halley Bay emperor penguin colony in successive seasons from 2016, following early break-out of the fast ice, with a concurrent increase in numbers at the nearby Dawson-Lambton colony consistent with relocation rather than mortality alone. V55 VERIFICATION BASIS: not opened during production; no research channel was available. Chick-loss counts and the exact sequence of seasons are not quoted anywhere in this pack for that reason.