Antarctica

Global warming has led to “a catastrophic” loss of emperor penguins’ cubs at several breeding grounds in western Antarctica last year when sea ice disappeared underneath them, according to a new British study. Researchers say 100 percent of the cubs drowned or froze to death at four of the five sites studied in a region of the Bellingshausen Sea. “This is the first major breeding disaster for emperor penguins across numerous colonies due to loss of ice in the oceans,” said researcher Peter Fretwell of the British Antarctic Survey. The study was published Thursday in Communications: Earth & Environment, which is affiliated with the journal Nature. “We’ve been predicting this for some time, but it’s been very hard to see it happen,” Fretwell says. There are about 250,000 breeding pairs of emperor penguins in Antarctica, according to a 2020 study. /ritzau/AFP