Penguins may help in counteracting climate change! Researchers reveal how
Penguins are proving to have that sort of superpower!
What's happening?
Antarctica is warming quickly due to human-caused climate change.
However, where there's a problem, there must be a will to solve it as well. A new study suggests that penguin droppings, or guano, could help keep the continent cooler.
The study, published in
Communications Earth & Environment
, shows that ammonia released from penguin guano helps form extra clouds above coastal Antarctica. These clouds block sunlight and may lower temperatures.
Can penguin poop save the world?
According to the paper, penguins are a key species in Antarctica, are "major emitters" of ammonia.
When the ammonia reacts with gases that contain sulfur emitted from phytoplankton in the ocean, it increases the creation of aerosols, which give water vapor a surface to condense upon and lead to cloud formation.
As per Matthew Boyer, a researcher at the University of Helsinki's Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research and lead author of the paper, "They have a synergistic role for the formation of particles in the atmosphere."
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According to the paper, the clouds can then act as an insulation in the atmosphere, helping to reduce surface temperatures, which in turn prevents the sea ice from melting.
Insight into the study:
Boyer noted that past lab studies indicated ammonia can aid in cloud formation. However, measuring this in Antarctica had not been done before.
Antarctica serves as a unique natural laboratory. With very little human pollution and few plants to produce cloud-forming gases, penguin colonies serve as the main source of ammonia.
However, penguins face threats due to shrinking sea ice, which disrupts their nesting, feeding, and routines to avoid predators. Understanding their ecological role is crucial.
Along with other seabirds like Imperial Shags, penguins release large amounts of ammonia through their droppings. When this ammonia mixes with sulfur gases from phytoplankton—tiny algae in the ocean—it helps create aerosol particles that form clouds.
To study this, Boyer and his team set up instruments at Argentina's Marambio Base on Seymour Island, near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. During those summer months, when penguin colonies thrive and phytoplankton bloom, they monitored wind, ammonia levels, and aerosols.
When wind blew from a nearby colony of 60,000 Adélie penguins, ammonia levels rose to 13.5 parts per billion—about a thousand times higher than normal.
Even a month after the penguins had migrated, ammonia concentrations remained about 100 times higher, thanks to the guano-soaked ground.
As air moved from the penguin colony, particle counters showed an increase in cloud-forming aerosols, sometimes thick enough to create fog. Chemical analysis pointed to ammonia from the penguins.
Boyer describes this as a "synergistic process" where penguins and phytoplankton work together to increase aerosol production in the area.
He warns that declining penguin numbers could worsen climate warming in the Antarctic summer, although this idea is still a hypothesis and not proven.
Clouds usually cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight, and the team believes a similar process occurs in Antarctica. However, the effect depends on what lies beneath the clouds. Ice and glaciers reflect a lot of sunlight, but clouds can also trap heat, so the overall impact depends on where clouds form.
Yet another reminder:
The findings highlight how interconnected Antarctic ecosystems are with Earth's climate systems. As ice melts and habitats shift due to
global warming
, it's not just wildlife like penguins that are at risk, but also the natural processes they support.
These findings also show how closely life and the atmosphere are linked, from the ancient rise of oxygen due to microbes to penguins affecting current cloud cover. As per Boyer, "This highlights the deep connection between ecosystems and atmospheric processes, and why we should care about biodiversity and conservation."
The Antarctic plays a vital role in stabilising global temperatures, acting as a heat buffer, a carbon sink, and the engine behind ocean currents, according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition. Unfortunately, it's also one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth.
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