08 Nov 2007 - I'm Meredith
Hooper, living in London. But I grew up
on the Australian coast. South, beyond the
wild ocean, was the great continent of Antarctica.
To me - Antarctica was mysterious, unapproachable.
I never thought I would ever go there.
I've been lucky. I've travelled there as
a writer four times since 1994, long journeys
on research ships, or living months in research
stations with scientists and support staff.
No humans live permanently in Antarctica,
or ever have. We humans come mostly for
the summer - when millions of sea birds
and seals are feeding in the cold clear
waters.
The Adélie penguin and climate change
Every summer Adélie, early summer
in Antarctica, penguins swim in to small
rocky islands just off Palmer Station, the
smallest of the US Antarctic bases, to build
their nests and raise their chicks. Excavation
of abandoned nest sites show that Adélies
have been coming to these islands on the
western side of the Antarctic Peninsula
for 700 years.
Then - suddenly - during the summer of
2001-02, Palmer's Adélies were hammered.
Storms roared down from the north. Unprecedented
amounts of snow buried the penguins on their
pebble nests. Melting snow drowned eggs.
Birds abandoned their nests, unable to sustain
the effort. Forty per cent of the expected
number of Adélies never even arrived
to begin the annual business of rearing
the season's chicks. Half way through summer,
rain starting belting down. Palmer has snow
- sleet - but not rain. Chicks' down isn't
waterproof. Many were too small to survive,
hatched late because the unseasonable snow
had delayed nest building, and mating.
Nothing like this weather had been seen.
The pattern stuck for 5 months, wrapped
around the top of the Antarctic Peninsula
like a collar, lasting from October 2001
to the end of February 2002. The warmest
temperatures so far recorded hit the region.
The "ferocious summer"
I experienced this summer, when climate
change really kicked in at Palmer. I'd come
to the station to research a book about
Palmer's Adélies, and the ideas of
US seabird ecologist Dr Bill Fraser who
had been studying them most of his working
life. I'd lived at Palmer 3 years earlier.
Days were calm and sunny, Adélie
colonies crowded, parents intent on feeding
insistent chicks - the sounds and smells
of success.
Now Bill and the field team struggled to
achieve the season's work, through rough
seas, high winds, driving snow and rain.
Bill used strong adjectives to describe
what the weather was dealing. One phrase,
'ferocious summer,' stuck in my mind. When
I began writing about what I had seen and
learnt at Palmer - I had my book's title:
The Ferocious Summer.
Counting the Adélies at Palmer began
in 1975, with a total of 15,202 breeding
pairs arriving at the 5 study site islands.
Data continued to be collected each season:
breeding pairs, egg and chick totals, number
of fledglings leaving the colonies at summer's
end to begin life at sea. But every year
fewer Adélies returned. Bill Fraser
argued that numbers were reducing because
of climate change. Increasing warmth resulted
in less sea ice, on which Adélies
and their prey depend. Warmer temperatures
brought increasing snow with severe impacts
on vulnerable nesting sites. Now the ferocious
summer of 2001-2002 was delivering the final
proof of climate change. The number of Adélies
arriving at the study islands plummeted
to 4,288 pairs, compared with 7,161 pairs
the year before.
Despite a brief recovery, Adélie
numbers have continued inexorably down.
The western side of the Antarctic Peninsula
is one of the most rapidly warming places
on earth. On the western side of the peninsula
surface temperatures in July - mid winter
- have gone up 6.3 ºC since 1951. With
increasing warmth, the ecology is changing.
Penguin species from further north - gentoos,
and chinstraps - are taking over nest sites
at Palmer. Elephant seals and fur seals
swim south during summer to haul out on
the islands.
Time scales of sufficient length need to
be in place to deliver real value in understanding
climate change, and the years of data assembled
by the seabird ecologists at Palmer have
been essential. Scientists working on climate
variability on the Antarctic Peninsula accept
that what has happened to Palmer's penguins
as evidence for the planet's warming.
Being at Palmer has brought me up against
the complex ways climate change can impact
on a place, and everything that lives there.
The ferocious summer delivered highly anomalous
weather - frequent and intense storms from
the north, with quantities of wet snow.
The weather affected the peninsula's sea
ice. The annual growth and decline of Antarctica's
sea ice - the vast expanding and contracting
of frozen white, the winter freezing, and
summer melt - is central to the way our
planet functions. But along the western
side of the Antarctic Peninsula there has
been a 40% decrease in the mean annual sea
ice extent since 1979, when reliable satellite
observations became available. Sea ice,
and the detail of what happens to it each
year, is vital to the survival of Adélies.
A jigsaw of impacts were unseating Palmer's
Adélies from an environment that
has matched their needs.
Rate of change is greater than many scientists
predicted
In the polar regions many scientists admit
that events - processes - the speed of change
- are greater, more rapid, more profound,
than they had ever anticipated. Antarctica
has around 70% of all our fresh water, locked
up as ice. But now warming is worming away
at the stores. When Antarctica's ice starts
to leak - as it is, without any doubt, along
the Antarctic Peninsula - that really matters.
Now. To all of us.
I'm not a scientist; I watch, talk, listen,
try and comprehend, then use my experience
as a writer to help stitch an awareness
of Antarctica into people's thinking, and
imaginations.
I tell the story of Palmer's penguins in
my book The Ferocious Summer as a way of
bringing understanding of climate change
to a wide audience. Palmer's Adélies
live in a remote and beautiful place. They
are only a small subset of Antarctica's
Adélies.
But - to me - their story is a kind of
parable. Adélies have been living
at Palmer, in desirable ocean-front locations,
for seven centuries. Now the conditions
have changed. They can't manage any more.
They are disappearing. Their story can stand
for so many of our planet's inhabitants.
