For well over a decade there has been a team of bird biologists led by Dr. Bill Fraser and his wife, Donna Patterson, working in the vicinity of Palmer Station. Their long term studies are providing important information on the population and feeding biology of gentoo, chin strap and Adelie penguins. The work involves countless, indeed endless hours of tagging and weighing birds, counting chicks and adults in each of many colonies.

Over the years Bill and Donna have enlisted the help of numerous enthusiastic young college-age field assistants. This year Chris and Heidi are the chosen ones. These dedicated students of ornithology have the rare opportunity to visit a host of the surrounding penguin islands, which under federal guidelines are strictly off limits to every one else in order to protect the nesting birds.

We at Palmer Station watch with envy as the bird team heads out each day in their zodiac boats to spend another day in the midst of hundreds of penguins. Some of us send our cameras along.

Bill Fraser has been predicting for years that as global warming progresses the penguin populations in the peninsular region will suffer declines. This year has been telling. When we arrived in early November (austral spring) we were to find the ensuing weeks brought persistent and heavy snowfall. Soon the field assistants began returning from their field work with long faces and growing trepidation.

“Many of the penguins sitting on their eggs are being buried with snow” they would exclaim. Concerns grew as the snows continued. Soon some penguins could only to be detected by the sight of their beak protruding from the snow. Eventually these penguins were only found by digging in to the snow and viewing them at the bottom of a deep snow hole. Sadly, prospects for survival under such conditions, are limited at best.

Bill Fraser had long predicted that increasing temperatures from global warming would cause increased amounts of snowfall (warmer air carries more moisture) on the Antarctic Peninsula and thus an indirect negative effect on hatching success in penguins. This spring his prediction seems to be right on.

It remains to be seen whether this is an unusual year or not, and what the longer term consequences of increased snowfall on the Antarctic Peninsula will be on the penguin populations. But for now, let it suffice that the news does not appear to be very reassuring. The pattern of increased warming on the peninsula is further substantiated by growing numbers of fur seals in the area, a species that typically makes its home in warmer climes to the north.

The unfortunate fate of our neighboring penguins makes one think long and hard about the potential consequences of global warming. Sometimes the effects of our actions, while indirect, are insidious. Over my 10 expeditions to this remarkable continent I have come to accept Antarctica as a barometer of global change. We need to carefully read its rhythms.