Climate change killing penguin chicks: study

Climate change is directly responsible for killing penguin chicks in Argentina, according to a 27-year study.

The research, conducted by the University of Washington, showed that Magellanic penguin chicks living on the Punta Tombo peninsula are dying because of drenching rainstorms and heat caused by climate change.

Some of the chicks are too big for their parents to sit on to keep warm, but too young to have grown protective waterproof feathers. When exposed to drenching rain, they can die of hypothermia.

"These rain storms ... are turning their nests into swimming pools and they really don't like to be wet," said the study's lead author, Professor Dee Boersma.

In extreme heat, the chicks are unable to cool off in water like older penguins can.

"It's the first long-term study to show climate change having a major impact on chick survival and reproductive success," Boersma said.

Punta Tumbo is the world's largest breeding area for Magellanic penguins.

Over the 27 years of the study, almost two-thirds of the chicks died every year, with starvation killing off 40 percent of them.

In an average year, seven percent of chicks died because of climate change, though there were years when it was the leading cause of death, killing up to half of the chicks.

The study's co-author, research scientist Ginger Rebstock, warned that more penguin chicks may be at risk.

"We're going to see years where almost no chicks survive if climate change makes storms bigger and more frequent during vulnerable times of the breeding season as climatologists predict," she said.