Global warming caused severe snowstorms that made it impossible for many bird species to nest, according to researchers.
The land of Queen Maud in Antarctica is home to some of the most important nesting sites for many seabirds. A year ago, the Christmas-January breeding season in the area was a complete failure, reports the scientific journal Current Biology.
Queen Maud’s Land has two breeding areas, Svarthamaren and Jutulsessen, which are the most important breeding sites for the Antarctic Antarctic heron, fulmar and snow Petrel.
Normally, they have up to hundreds of thousands of ice storm petrel nests and 2 000 snow storm petrel nests and several hundred gudgeon nests.
In the 2021–22 breeding season, the researchers found a total of only three ice storm petrel nests and a few snow storm petrel nests, and no harrier nests.
These birds lay their eggs on exposed rock during the Antarctic summer. The researchers found that there were exceptionally strong snowstorms during the breeding season.
Climate change increases snowfall
According to the researchers, the reason behind the failure of nesting is global warming, which has also become evident in Antarctica in the last few years.
When the air warms by one degree, it can contain seven percent more moisture. For warmer zones, this leads to more heavy rainfall, but in arctic regions, snowfall increases.
As a result of this phenomenon, for example, the breeding area of \u200b\u200bSvarthamaren was covered in snow in January 2022, says the British Museum of Natural History.
The harsh weather conditions in Antarctica always take away part of the chick production, but missing an entire generation of birds is very exceptional, according to researchers.
The liitäjä and kihu stocks are not threatened as a result of one year of cover.
Birds can survive the roof year, but the decrease in the number of individuals affects the balance of nature. The nesting failure of the wagtails is partly due to the fact that they use the eggs and chicks of the sparrows for food.