Penguin droppings keep Antarctica cold, — research

An international team of researchers has found that penguin defecation slows down temperature rise in Antarctica.

The fact, is that the penguin’s the excrement releases ammonia, which creates clouds in the atmosphere that trap the sun’s heat. The researchers, led by Matthew Boyer, a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki, studied a penguin colony of 60,000 individuals. 

Scientists measured the concentration of ammonia in the atmosphere near the Marambio base in the summer of 2023 and found that it was a thousand times higher than the baseline. Since there are almost no plants in Antarctica, penguins play a key role in the formation of aerosol clouds.

Since penguins mainly eat fish, their feces contain a lot of substances with a high nitrogen content, which release ammonia when decomposed. It mixes with sulfur dioxide emitted by phytoplankton, resulting in aerosol particles.

According to the scientists, there is a really high concentration of ammonia in the places where the penguins are housed When the colony’s inhabitants migrate, they can leave behind so much feces that the ammonia level is a hundred times higher than normal for another month.

At the same time, such clouds can lead not only to temperature reduction in the Antarctic, but also to increase if these clouds reflect sunlight worse than the ice. In this case, these clouds will retain heat, which will further heat the surface.

According to Boyer, as the local climate in Antarctica changes and evolves, it will affect climate systems in the rest of the world. Antarctica’s ice, ocean and ecosystems play a key role in regulating global temperatures. In addition, the researchers found that dimethylamine, which is also released from penguin droppings, accelerates the formation of aerosols up to 10 thousand times. This helps to create a kind of buffer between the sun’s heat and the Antarctic ice. 

The results of the study are published in the journal Nature

Source: 404media