Penguin guano may help reduce effects of climate change in Antarctica

Pungent Penguin Poop Produces Polar Cloud Particles

The discovery highlights how penguins and other polar seabirds help shape their environments, even as they are under threat from climate change.

Gaseous! Bloomberg News Hails ‘Penguin Poop’ as Savior of Antarctica from Global Warming

The B.S. doesn’t get any more odorous than this. Bloomberg News is waving around fecal matter as a method to prevent Antarctica melting from the ever-present climate boogeyman of global warming. Reporter Aaron Clark filled the toilet on Bloomberg News’s website May 22 with a story headlined, “Penguin Poop Could Limit Global Warming’s Impact on Antarctica.” Yes, this is an actual story. Clark, who based his argument on a seemingly wacky new study…

Penguin guano is an important source of climate-relevant aerosol particles in Antarctica

Gaseous ammonia, while influential in atmospheric processes, is critically underrepresented in atmospheric measurements. This limits our understanding of key climate-relevant processes, such as new particle formation, particularly in remote regions. Here, we present highly sensitive, online observations of gaseous ammonia from a coastal site in Antarctica, which allows us to constrain the mechanism of new particle formation in this region in unp…

Ammonia evaporating from the feces of penguin colonies in Antarctica cools and thus helps the warming climate. This issue is also being studied in Salla, Finland, and Svalbard, Norway.

Why penguin poop might be protecting Antarctica from rising temperatures

In December 2022, Matthew Boyer hopped on an Argentine military plane to one of the more remote habitations on Earth: Marambio Station at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, where the icy continent stretches toward South America. Months before that, Boyer had to ship expensive, delicate instruments that might get busted by the time he landed. “When you arrive, you have boxes that have been sometimes sitting outside in Antarctica for a month or t…

Research shows penguin poo helps keep Antarctica cool

Antarctica's icy wilderness is warming rapidly under the weight of human-driven climate change, yet a new study points to an unlikely ally in the fight to keep the continent cool: penguin poo.