Latest news with #AntarcticPeninsula
ABC News
25-05-2025
- ABC News
Antarctic tourist numbers could reach almost half a million by 2033, forecast shows
Icebergs, penguins and almost half a million annual tourists — that's the potential scenario facing Antarctica next decade, according to new research. The southern continent might be cold, remote and expensive to reach, but it's increasingly viewed as a bucket list destination. Over the past few decades, tourist numbers have grown rapidly, from about 8,000 in the mid-1990s to almost 125,000 in 2023-24. A new report published in the Journal for Sustainable Tourism suggests the boom is set to continue, with annual visitor numbers forecast to reach 452,000 by 2033-34. The projection was calculated using a mathematical model based on three decades of historical visitation data. If the forecast proves correct, it would equate to an almost four-fold increase on current levels, prompting calls for consideration of measures such as visitor caps and tourism taxes to mitigate potential environmental impacts. "This is the best estimate we currently have," lead author Dr Valeria Senigaglia, from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), said. Most of the tourism activity is concentrated on the coastal fringe of the Antarctic Peninsula, due to its proximity to the southern tip of Argentina, where many of the cruise ships depart. Once tourists reach Antarctica, they can participate in a range of activities, including small boat landings, kayaking, polar plunges, snorkelling, helicopter rides and overnight camping. But the influx of people and vessels comes with potential risks to the local environment, including: "A core concern is that the cumulative impacts of tourism … will interact with climate-change-induced shifts … resulting in widespread habitat degradation and declines in wildlife populations and diversity," the report states. During the 2023-24 season, 55 tour companies conducted 569 voyages to Antarctica, with about two thirds of passengers on smaller expedition-style vessels that allow landfall. Most tour companies that go to the region are part of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), which requires its members to abide by strict guidelines, including: Tourist activities in Antarctica are also subject to environmental impact assessments under the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. "Travel, when managed well, is a powerful force for good," said Steve McLaughlin from IAATO member Aurora Expeditions. "Our idea is to make ambassadors for the planet." The new report — compiled by researchers from QUT, UTAS, CSIRO and two international universities — assessed additional measures that could complement existing guidelines and regulations. "Our primary goal is to identify practical ways to manage for the potential impacts of this rapidly growing and diversifying Antarctic tourism industry before reaching a tipping point of irreparable change," the report states. The researchers determined that a "suite of instruments" would be the best way to slow growth and limit potential impacts, including: "To manage tourism sustainably, we need to operate at a different level," Dr Senigaglia said. "We need regulations and site-specific guidelines, but these cannot be the only method. "And applying more global instruments might help in preserving not just biodiversity but the ecosystem services provided by Antarctica." However, implementing the recommendations could prove challenging, with the report acknowledging the difficulty of getting Antarctic Treaty nations to reach consensus. IAATO told the ABC it was committed to sustainable tourism. "We're driven by people who are extremely passionate about Antarctica and about protecting Antarctica," the organisation's executive director, Lisa Kelley, said. Ms Kelley said the report's forecast of exponential growth over the next decade should be viewed with caution, particularly because of unforeseen changes in the global economy. "Growth is very much tied to the [global] economy," Ms Kelley said. She said IAATO's most recent figures, which are yet to be published and were not included in the report, showed a 5 per cent downturn in visitor numbers over the 2024-25 season. Visitor numbers were expected to again dip slightly next season, Ms Kelley said. She said it was up to Antarctic Treaty nations to decide the best way to regulate the tourism industry. The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), which represents international non-government conservation organisations, said if tourist numbers kept rising, industry guidelines and self-regulation would not be sufficient. "If you're not regulating one of the major human activities that is growing fairly rapidly, then you are not really protecting the Antarctic environment," ASOC executive director Claire Christian said. The future management of tourism will be discussed at the annual Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Italy next month.
BBC News
25-05-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Derby woman returns from working at world's southernmost museum
A woman who went to work at the world's southernmost museum in Antarctica says the experience was "unlike anything else".Aoife McKenna, from Derby, left the UK in November to move 9,000 miles to Port Lockroy, a British Antarctic base on Goudier described the island as "very isolated" and slightly smaller than a football despite its size, Ms McKenna said the island was "a much busier part of the world than people probably realise". The UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) says the island is home to the world's southernmost post office and museum, along with a colony of gentoo McKenna told the BBC: "We were positioned on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is kind of a strip of the continent that sort of reaches up towards the bottom of South America. "We saw probably around 18,000 people over the course of the season, who visit on cruise ships and all kinds of small boats and yachts. "People came to do scientific research, all kinds of people came."Ms McKenna spent five months on the island working with a team of four others to assess museum objects at the said: "We were able to do that but also I wanted to make the most of the experience, to spend the time with the penguins and spend as much time outside as possible."There are roughly one thousand penguins on the island, and in the time that we were there they had just under 700 chicks, so that was really cute and definitely a highlight." UKAHT runs Port Lockroy - the UK's first scientific base in Antarctica - and Ms McKenna said open recruitment takes place every year."The majority of people who do this job have never worked in Antarctica before," she said. "It is a little bit more accessible than most people think."For Ms McKenna, the hardest part of the job was how long the days felt."For a lot of the season, there's 24 hours of daylight," she said."So there was no real sense of time passing, it always felt like the middle of the day, even when it was the middle of the night. "Because we were working long hours, that definitely made us all really tired."There was a lot of adjustment coming back. We came back through Argentina on the way, so we spent some time in Buenos Aires on the way back. "Adjusting to a huge city was definitely interesting. I noticed the noise a lot more."She returned to the UK at the end of March and is now working at a museum in Stirling, says the experience has made her "even more passionate" about museums and heritage.
Gizmodo
23-05-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
The Surprising Link Between Penguin Poop and Cloud Formation
Scientists have discovered a surprising—and smelly—source of clouds in Antarctica: penguin poop. According to a new study published in Communications Earth & Environment, ammonia gas emanating from these flightless birds' guano sets off a chain of chemical reactions that causes clouds to form. These clouds may be changing local temperatures in the Antarctic—and perhaps the global climate. At the Marambio Base on the Antarctic Peninsula, researchers led by Matthew Boyer—a doctoral candidate at the University of Helsinki in Finland—measured the concentration of ammonia wafting from a colony of 60,000 Aldelie penguins from January to March 2023. When the wind blew from the direction of the colony, ammonia levels spiked, sometimes reaching 1,000 times above normal levels. In February, the penguins left the area to continue their annual migration, but the guano they left behind kept ammonia levels up to 100 times higher than normal for over a month. Because penguins mainly eat fish and krill, their excrement is full of nitrogen waste that ultimately breaks down into ammonia. This chemical compound rises into the air as gas, then mixes with sulfur gas produced by marine microorganisms, such as phytoplankton. That reaction creates aerosol particles, which then join with water droplets to form clouds. Previous studies have modeled this chain reaction before, but Boyer and his colleagues watched the clouds form in real time. In February 2023, they measured a particularly strong burst of aerosols from the guano, then sampled a fog that formed just a few hours later. This confirmed that the fog contained particles created by the reaction between ammonia from the guano and sulfuric acid from plankton. 'There is a deep connection between these ecosystem processes, between penguins and phytoplankton at the ocean surface,' Boyer told Grist. 'Their gas is all interacting to form these particles and clouds.' There are about 20 million penguins living in Antarctica, according to the British Antarctic Survey. This teeming population produces a lot of poop, and therefore a lot of clouds. Computer models have found that these clouds reflect sunlight, leading to significant ground cooling. Boyer and his colleagues state that more research is needed to fully understand the clouds' impact on local temperatures. But if they do have a cooling effect, they suggest that declining penguin populations could exacerbate Antarctic warming during the summertime. 'It is already understood that widespread loss of sea ice extent threatens the habitat, food sources, and breeding behavior of most penguin species that inhabit Antarctica,' the authors state. 'Consequently, some Antarctic penguin populations are already declining, and some species could be nearly extinct by the end of the 21st century.' Among the world's 18 penguin species, 11 are globally threatened, according to BirdLife International. The Adelie penguins that Boyer studied, however, are one of the few species whose Antarctic population is experiencing an increase in numbers. But if these poo clouds are less reflective than the ice beneath it, they may trap heat close to Earth's surface and cause temperatures to rise, Boyer told the Washington Post. Getting to the bottom of these impacts is important because local changes in Antarctica and the Arctic can affect the whole world, particularly in terms of sea level rise. 'The oceans and the penguins are influencing the atmosphere and actually influencing the local climate in Antarctica,' Boyer told the Washington Post. 'The local changes in Antarctica will have an impact on global climate.'
Fast Company
23-05-2025
- Science
- Fast Company
Why penguin poop might be protecting Antarctica from rising temperatures
In December 2022, Matthew Boyer hopped on an Argentine military plane to one of the more remote habitations on Earth: Marambio Station at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, where the icy continent stretches toward South America. Months before that, Boyer had to ship expensive, delicate instruments that might get busted by the time he landed. 'When you arrive, you have boxes that have been sometimes sitting outside in Antarctica for a month or two in a cold warehouse,' said Boyer, a PhD student in atmospheric science at the University of Helsinki. 'And we're talking about sensitive instrumentation.' But the effort paid off, because Boyer and his colleagues found something peculiar about penguin guano. In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, they describe how ammonia wafting off the droppings of 60,000 birds contributed to the formation of clouds that might be insulating Antarctica, helping cool down an otherwise rapidly warming continent. Some penguin populations, however, are under serious threat because of climate change. Losing them and their guano could mean fewer clouds and more heating in an already fragile ecosystem, one so full of ice that it will significantly raise sea levels worldwide as it melts. A better understanding of this dynamic could help scientists hone their models of how Antarctica will transform as the world warms. They can now investigate, for instance, if some penguin species produce more ammonia and, therefore, more of a cooling effect. 'That's the impact of this paper,' said Tamara Russell, a marine ornithologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who studies penguins but wasn't involved in the research. 'That will inform the models better, because we know that some species are decreasing, some are increasing, and that's going to change a lot down there in many different ways.' With their expensive instruments, Boyer and his research team measured atmospheric ammonia between January and March 2023, summertime in the southern hemisphere. They found that when the wind was blowing from an Adelie penguin colony 5 miles away from the detectors, concentrations of the gas shot up to 1,000 times higher than the baseline. Even when the penguins had moved out of the colony after breeding, ammonia concentrations remained elevated for at least a month, as the guano continued emitting the gas. That atmospheric ammonia could have been helping cool the area. The researchers further demonstrated that the ammonia kicks off an atmospheric chain reaction. Out at sea, tiny plantlike organisms known as phytoplankton release the gas dimethyl sulfide, which transforms into sulphuric acid in the atmosphere. Because ammonia is a base, it reacts readily with this acid. This coupling results in the rapid formation of aerosol particles. Clouds form when water vapor gloms onto any number of different aerosols, like soot and pollen, floating around in the atmosphere. In populated places, these particles are more abundant, because industries and vehicles emit so many of them as pollutants. Trees and other vegetation spew aerosols, too. But because Antarctica lacks trees and doesn't have much vegetation at all, the aerosols from penguin guano and phytoplankton can make quite an impact. In February 2023, Boyer and the other researchers measured a particularly strong burst of particles associated with guano, sampled a resulting fog a few hours later, and found particles created by the interaction of ammonia from the guano and sulphuric acid from the plankton. 'There is a deep connection between these ecosystem processes, between penguins and phytoplankton at the ocean surface,' Boyer said. 'Their gas is all interacting to form these particles and clouds.' But here's where the climate impacts get a bit trickier. Scientists know that in general, clouds cool Earth's climate by reflecting some of the sun's energy back into space. Although Boyer and his team hypothesize that clouds enhanced with penguin ammonia are probably helping cool this part of Antarctica, they note that they didn't quantify that climate effect, which would require further research. That's a critical bit of information because of the potential for the warming climate to create a feedback loop. As oceans heat up, penguins are losing access to some of their prey, and colonies are shrinking or disappearing as a result. Fewer penguins producing guano means less ammonia and fewer clouds, which means more warming and more disruptions to the animals, and on and on in a self-reinforcing cycle. 'If this paper is correct—and it really seems to be a nice piece of work to me—[there's going to be] a feedback effect, where it's going to accelerate the changes that are already pushing change in the penguins,' said Peter Roopnarine, curator of geology at the California Academy of Sciences. Scientists might now look elsewhere, Roopnarine adds, to find other bird colonies that could also be providing cloud cover. Protecting those species from pollution and hunting would be a natural way to engineer Earth systems to offset some planetary warming. 'We think it's for the sake of the birds,' Roopnarine said. 'Well, obviously it goes well beyond that.' —By Matt Simon, Grist
RNZ News
20-05-2025
- Science
- RNZ News
The world's ice sheets just got a dire prognosis, and coastlines will pay the price
By Laura Paddleson , CNN Iceberg and large fragments of drifting ice floating in front of the Antarctic Peninsula. Photo: AFP / Claudius Thiriet The world's ice sheets are on course for runaway melting, leading to multiple metres of sea level rise and "catastrophic" migration away from coastlines, even if the world pulls off the miraculous and keeps global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to new research. A group of international scientists set out to establish what a "safe limit" of warming would be for the survival of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. They pored over studies that took data from satellites, climate models and evidence from the past, from things like ice cores, deep-sea sediments and even octopus DNA. What they found painted a dire picture. The world has pledged to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. However, not only is this limit speeding out of reach - the world is currently on track for up to 2.9 degrees of warming by 2100. But the most alarming finding of the study, published on Tuesday in the journal Communications Earth and Environment , is that 1.5 might not even be good enough to save the ice sheets. Even if the world sustains today's level of warming, at 1.2 degrees, it could still trigger rapid ice sheet retreat and catastrophic sea level rise, the scientists found. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets together hold enough fresh water to raise global sea levels by around 213 feet (65 metres) - an unlikely scenario but one that must be acknowledged to fully understand the risk. Since the 1990s, the amount of ice they've lost has quadrupled; they are currently losing around 370 billion tons a year. Ice sheet melting is the dominant contributor to rising seas and the rate of annual sea level rise has doubled over the past 30 years. Photo: Soph Warnes / CNN via NASA It's set to get worse. Multiple studies suggest 1.5 degrees of warming is "far too high" to prevent rapid ice sheet retreat that would be irreversible on human timescales, and the world should prepare for many feet of sea level rise over the coming centuries, according to the study. "You don't slow sea level rise at 1.5, in fact, you see quite a rapid acceleration," said Chris Stokes, a study author and glaciologist at Durham University. It's an existential threat to the world's coastal populations. Around 230 million people live less than 1 metre above sea level. Even small changes in the amount of ice held in the ice sheets will "profoundly alter" global coastlines, displacing hundreds of millions of people and causing damage that stretches the limits of adaptation, the study found. Seas could surge by 0.4 inches (1.01cm) a year by the end of the century, within the lifetimes of young people now, the scientists found. At this level, which equates to 40 inches a century, "you're going to see massive land migration on scales that we've never witnessed since modern civilisation," said Jonathan Bamber, a study author and glaciologist at the University of Bristol. There are still huge uncertainties about where tipping points lie. The way climate change unfolds is not linear and it's unclear exactly when warming might trigger rapid retreat and even collapse. What's hugely concerning, the study authors say, is that the best estimates of "safe" temperature thresholds for saving the ice sheets keep going down as scientists better understand their vulnerability to climate change. Early modelling suggested temperatures would need to hit around 3 degrees of warming to destabilise the Greenland ice sheet, for example, but recent estimates suggest it would only take around 1.5 degrees. To avoid the rapid collapse of one of more ice sheets means limiting global warming to closer to 1 degree above pre-industrial levels, the study authors concluded. This would require drastic cuts to the amount of fossil fuels humans burn, something which looks exceptionally unlikely as countries including the US continue to embrace oil, coal and gas. The world is already starting to see some of the worst-case scenarios play out in terms of ice loss, Stokes said. "There's very little that we're observing that gives us hope here," he said. "The absolute best-case scenario is that sea level rise is slow and steady," he added. The findings don't mean the world should give up on climate targets, as every fraction of a degree of warming translates to worse impacts, Stokes said. "Limiting warming to 1.5 will be a major achievement. It should absolutely be our target, but in no sense will it slow or stop sea level rise and melting ice sheets." -CNN
