Satellite observations find drastic rise in population of emperor penguins

There has been a drastic rise in the population of emperor penguins in the world. Satellite observations have found nearly a dozen new colonies of the iconic species in Antarctica.

Emperor penguins are a species known for their long, complicated breeding process. They often face challenges from the forces of nature. It's not easy for their numbers to grow. They are faced with the threat of global warming.

But in development, new groups of them have been found in Antarctica. The British Antarctic survey used the European Union's Sentinel-2 spacecraft.

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It scoured the edges of the continent. Looking for emperor penguin activity. Identifying those that have gone unrecognised before.

It's impossible to count individual penguins from orbit. But the researchers can estimate numbers in colonies. From the size of the birds' huddles.

The locations were identified from the way the birds' poo or guano had stained large patches of sea-ice.

The satellite's infrared imagery found 8 breeding sites. And confirmed the presence of three others which were mooted at a time when there were no high-resolution space pictures.

Two of the new locations are in the antarctic peninsula region.

Three are in the western part of the continent and six others are in the east. The new finds take the number of known active breeding sites from 50 to 61.

It seems that these emperor penguin groups like to keep at least a 100 km distance between themselves.

And the new sites maintain that distancing discipline.

The discovery pushes up the emperor penguins population by 5-10 per cent.

There are now more than 278,500 breeding pairs.

However, all the cheer over the new findings. Needs to be tempered with a reality check.

The emperor penguin's whole life cycle is centred around the availability of sea-ice.

And climate models have projected that. They are set to melt fast in the coming decades.

This could have a catastrophic effect on the penguins' ability to survive.

Forecasts have said that their population could crash by a half or even more by the year 2100.