Penguins are on the front lines of the climate war.
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00:00Penguins are on the front line of the climate war, as they often hang out in the coldest
00:08places on Earth.
00:10Places like Antarctica, where many species of penguins call these giant ice sheets home.
00:14Homes that will literally melt away as the planet continues to get warmer.
00:18Which is why experts from Stony Brook University are now counting penguins, hoping to track
00:23their populations because of what those numbers can tell us about our climate at large.
00:27This is polar ecology researcher Michael Weathington to explain.
00:31We can use penguins as a sort of bio-indicator to see how the rest of the ecosystem is operating.
00:38Penguins conveniently come to the same nesting sites over and over and over, year after year.
00:44And so we have this reliable signature of, you know, what are, how many individuals are
00:49there from one year to the next, and how does this play out sort of over decades or even
00:55longer timescales.
00:56And in certain areas they have found differing results.
00:58In western parts of Antarctica, specifically the Weddell Sea, Adelie penguin populations
01:03have been thriving, as that area is warming at a slower rate.
01:06But in other areas the species has not been so lucky, as ice masses have continued to
01:10decline at an alarming rate.
01:12However, the good news is that their numbers overall have remained stable.
01:15Something they say means now is the time to begin putting protections in place for the
01:19tuxedo-clad climate vanguard.