The impact of climate change is becoming more and more visible Antarctica. The arrival of the new year is when Antarctic birds such as the arctic skua, Antarctic bird and snowbird make their nests and lay their eggs. Researchers did not find a single skua nest in Svarthamaren, one of the regions where these birds flock to raise their chicks between December 2021 and January 2022. Similarly, the number of Antarctic bird and snowbird nests dropped to almost zero.
In these regions, Climate change has caused snowfall and snow accumulation to be significantly higher than in previous years.. Now, the study, published in the journal ‘Current Biology’, shows that these unusually strong blizzards hinder the birds’ reproductive abilities.
“We know that in a seabird colony, when there is a storm, some chicks and eggs are lost and reproductive success is lower,” says lead author of the study and researcher Sebastien Descamps of the Norwegian Polar Institute. we’re not talking about tens or even hundreds of thousands of birds here, and none of them spawned during these storms. It’s really unexpected to have zero reproductive success.”
Svarthamaren and nearby Jutulsessen are home to two of the largest Antarctic bird colonies in the world and are the main nesting areas for snowbird and south arctic skua. Between 1985 and 2020, Svarthamaren had between 20,000 and 200,000 Antarctic bird nests per year, about 2,000 snowbirds, and more than 100 skunks.
mass disappearance
There were only three breeding Antarctic birds in the 2021-2022 season, a handful of breeding snowbirds and zero skuana nests.. Similarly, there were no Antarctic bird nests in Jutulsessen in the summer of 2021-2022, despite having shown tens of thousands of active nests in previous years.
“It wasn’t just an isolated colony affected by these extreme weather conditions. We are talking about colonies spread over hundreds of kilometers. –Descamp alert–. So these stormy conditions really affected a large piece of land, meaning that the breeding success of a large portion of the Antarctic bird population was affected.”
These birds lay their eggs on bare ground, so with enough snow the ground becomes inaccessible and it becomes impossible to raise chicks. Storms also have a thermoregulatory cost: Birds must use their available strength to shelter, stay warm and conserve energy.
The problem is accelerating in Antarctica
“Until recently, there were no obvious signs of climate warming in Antarctica.Except for the peninsula,” Descamps recalls, “but in recent years there has been new research and new extreme weather events that have begun to change our perspective on climate change in Antarctica.”
Descamps hopes the model used to predict storm severity over time can be fine-tuned and become even more accurate. “When it comes to storm severity, it’s as much about the wind as the snowpack. There aren’t many places where we have adequate snow measurements, and that plays a big part in the storm.” It’s time to explain the reproductive success of birds.
“I think our study strongly demonstrates that these extreme events have a very strong impact on seabird populations, and climate models predict that the severity of these extreme events will increase.”
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