Warmer temperatures in the Antarctic could threaten penguins, whales, seals and a host of smaller creatures, a marine biologist warns in a lecture to be given at Christmas. Lloyd Peck, of the British Antarctic Survey, argues that even a small rise in sea temperatures could have dramatic consequences.
"Antarctic animals -- in the sea especially -- are very sensitive to climate change and they are the early warning system for the loss of species on the planet. We should be watching for those because climate change is probably going to get rid of them before it gets rid of other species," he says.
"We know things are changing; it is going to be really unpleasant; we are going to lose things -- we just don't know how much," he said.
Peck, 47, a scuba diving expert on the strange fauna of the south polar seabed, will deliver this year's UK Royal Institution Christmas lecture, backed by film from Antarctica. The Christmas lectures for young people were founded by the physicist Michael Faraday in the mid-1820s and have been televised since 1966.
His message is that important species in the freezing southern seas are so sensitive to temperature shifts that they could perish in a world only a couple of degrees warmer.
"We take clams out of the sediment and let them bury themselves again. We take limpets off the seashore, turn them over and let them turn back again. If you warm them up by about two degrees or so from their normal summer temperatures, they lose the ability to do those functions," he says.
Antarctic krill, the tiny shrimp-like creatures that flourish in their billions, are also at risk. In winter, krill depend on thick mats of green algae that flourish on the underside of ice shelves which extend out of the polar darkness into the sub-Antarctic light.
As the oceans warm, the winter ice will retreat, and the algae will vanish.
"If one of the key species in the system goes, then very quickly you'd lose a lot of the system. And that would affect penguins, seals and whales. The fishery areas around the Antarctic would be affected," he said.
"So the animals that everybody is interested in -- the furry ones with big eyes, the penguins, the whales -- there is potential for them to be affected very quickly by the loss of a few species in the Antarctic food chain," Peck said.
The Antarctic continent is still cold. But the Antarctic peninsula, home to the British research bases, has warmed by up to 3?C in the last 50 years.
"We have seen big losses of ice shelves and glaciers, recession of ice, and have seen new habitable areas for animals on the Antarctic peninsula," Peck said.
"On this trip I saw grass growing in areas that I have not seen grass before. I am seeing mosses and animals on land that was covered in ice just five or 10 years ago," he said.
Seals and penguins are adapted to dramatic seasonal changes in temperature and travel huge distances for food. But polar life is unforgiving, and small cyclical shifts in temperatures in the equatorial Pacific already cause huge losses to penguin colonies further south.
"When you have low krill stocks the penguins die, and they die when the chicks get to fledgling age. The time when the chicks need food most is just when they are about to go to sea. If the food supply is not enough, you can have 95 percent or 99 percent mortalities in a couple of weeks," Peck said. "The whole place goes from a mass of penguin chicks to a big mass of dead bodies all over the place."
Peck was born in 1957, the son of a steel foundry worker, and he still isn't quite sure how he became a marine biologist in the world's emptiest continent.
"My mother and father were desperate that I wouldn't work in a heavy industry. My father would say to me, `If you work down the pit or in a steel foundry when you are grown up I am going to cut your hands off,'" he said.
He became fascinated by how animals use energy. The Antarctic proved to be the perfect laboratory, because its denizens have to cope with extremes. So, of course, do its scientists.
"The whole world is just flat and white for as far as you can see in all directions and the air is so clear that you could see a mountaintop 50 or 60 miles away, and it is so quiet that you can have a conversation with somebody a quarter of a mile away because there is no background noise," he said.
"On a still day, it is a really surreal world. And then the wind blows, and the snow starts to whip off the ice, and you can't see anything," he said.
"Visibility is about two meters, so you just stay inside," he said.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS