Hundreds of juvenile emperor penguins, driven by their gnawing hunger, gather at the edge of a 50-foot (15-meter) Antarctic ice cliff, eyeing the freezing sea below. How do we get down there? — they seem to be asking each other as they pile up and push closer and closer to the abyss, their only source of nourishment.
And then, one brave chick takes the plunge, executing a belly-dive that’s as clumsy as it is daring.
The bird plummets and splashes into the icy water, only to resurface seconds later, swimming away in its quest for sustenance. One by one, others follow, using their swimming wings to break their fall as they tumble down.
It’s a surreal diving competition from a five-story ice ledge. But make no mistake — this isn’t another group of teenagers seeking some thrilling fun jump. This is climate change’s invisible hand, mercilessly forcing emperor penguin chicks to leap into the unknown.
Forced Into The Abyss
Emperor penguins typically breed on sea ice that melts away yearly and just hop a few feet into the ocean, not on ice shelves affixed to land. But lately, more chicks are being bred on permanent ice shelves, forcing them to jump higher distances into the sea, due to earlier seasonal thawing of sea ice from climate change. These chicks found themselves in a tough spot, likely starving, and their parents had already gone to sea.
Antarctica is warming nearly twice as fast as the rest of the world, as estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is the main reason why Antarctica’s contribution to global sea level rise has tripled in the last decade, threatening coastal communities, low-lying islands, and breeding colonies. As sea ice continues to decline, it’s likely we’ll see more penguins forced to breed on ice shelves. And the first-of-its-kind footage captured in the upcoming documentary series Secrets of the Penguins, filmed in Atka Bay may become more common in the future.
A 2021 study estimated that if climate change continues on its current path, the emperor penguin population could be extinct by the end of the century.
Nothing speaks louder than the record-low Antarctic sea ice in late 2022, which led to a catastrophic breeding failure, causing multiple colonies across a vast region to disappear. An estimated 7,000 chicks died — they either drowned in the water or froze on the ice because they didn’t have their waterproof feathers yet.
Yes, penguins are resilient and adaptable. Their recent high dive, captured on film, proves their hardiness. But how much more can they take? How quickly can they adapt to these rapid changes? How far — and from how high — can they be forced to leap?
A Record-Breaking 40°C Heat Wave
The Southern Ocean has been facing extremely low sea ice cover several times in recent years, a stark reversal from a record high in 2014. This sudden shift suggests that Antarctic sea ice is on a concerning new path, evident in astounding climate alterations.
The most shocking one took place on March 18, 2022, when scientists at Concordia research station in east Antarctica recorded the most significant temperature leap ever at any weather station on Earth. Temperatures soared 38.5º C (69.3º F) above average, peaking at -9.4°C or 15°F. Although cold by global standards, this temperature was significantly higher than the previous record at that station and set a new world record. To understand the magnitude of this, consider that the previous March maximum temperature at this location was -27.6°C (-17.68°F).
Emperor penguin chicks take their first swim leaping from a 50 foot cliff.
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 11, 2024
[📹 Bertie Gregory / NatGeo]pic.twitter.com/9tcxOCNUFU
The cause? An extremely potent “atmospheric river,” a concentrated band of water vapor from the tropics and subtropics. This weather phenomenon brought thick clouds that trapped heat in the lower atmosphere. Combined with solar radiation, this led to unusual ground-level warmth. And their frequency is only increasing as the Earth heats up, with climate change boosting tropical cyclone activity and convection in the Indian Ocean. The reason these streams can now penetrate so deeply into Antarctic air isn’t fully understood yet.
A March 2024 paper in the Journal of Climate by a team led by Will Hobbs of the University of Tasmania delves into these findings. The study scrutinizes satellite sea ice records and atmospheric reanalyses to evaluate the evidence for this shift, and reaches an unequivocal conclusion: there has been an “abrupt critical transition” in the continent’s climate that could have repercussions for both local Antarctic ecosystems and the global climate system.
“The extreme lows in Antarctic sea ice have led researchers to suggest that a regime shift is underway in the Southern Ocean, and we found multiple lines of evidence that support such a shift to a new sea ice state,” said Will Hobbs.
Even though the March 2022 heatwave only lasted four days, it had far-reaching consequences. Heavy rain and surface melt hit coastal areas. Inland, the tropical moisture turned into a massive snowfall. Intriguingly, the snow’s weight balanced out Antarctica’s ice loss for the year, temporarily halting its contribution to global sea-level rise.
On the other hand, it proved that even short-lived weather extremes can have long-term impacts on the Antarctic climate system, from increasing ice mass inland to coastal surface melting and ice-shelf collapse. It has reshaped the understanding of what’s possible in terms of heatwaves and atmospheric river intensity in Antarctica, and the global climate as a whole.
Because a 40º C increase may be manageable in sub-zero temperatures, but consider this: if a city in the world’s lower latitudes experienced such a rise today, temperatures would soar over 50º C (122º F) — a lethal outcome for the population.
We’re wrestling with an entirely unprecedented phenomenon — non-linear change.
The Brutality of Non-Linear Change
Change can be simple when it’s linear, like a tree growing taller year by year. We can handle that. But what happens when changes are not gradual, but abrupt and exponential?
Jet lag is a non-linear change. It throws your body off balance, and it can take a week to recover. Another example is the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, cases increased slowly, and then they exploded — that’s a non-linear change.
Climate change, too, is non-linear. Even a slight change in temperature or rainfall has a massive impact on biodiversity, sea levels, and extreme weather events.
Take the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. That’s not just change — that’s sudden, drastic, non-linear change. There’s a connection between that bomb and our rapidly melting Antarctica. Between 1971 and 2018, the ocean absorbed heat equivalent to over 25 billion Hiroshima bombs — and we’re not stopping there.
Heating a cubic meter of air by 1º C takes about 2,000 joules, but heating seawater takes 2,100 times that energy, about 4.2 million joules. The ocean’s been taking the heat for us, creating the illusion that climate change is a slow game. But we’ve merely stored the problem: it’s coming back for us.
NOAA predicts a 22% chance that 2024 will be the hottest year on record and a 99% chance it’ll be in the top five. With the drastic 40°C heatwave in 2022, the shift from linear to non-linear change is evident.
When a bathtub overflows, you don’t run for buckets or towels. You turn off the tap. Yet our predatory capitalist system, with its emissions, keeps pushing us towards this non-linear path. Unless we fight for net-zero emissions, expect more freak weather, scorched earth, and desperate penguins leaping off cliffs as the planet heats up.
Be loud.
