https://nypost.com/2026/10/13/science/penguin-poop-could-be-accelerating-antarctic-decline-study/
By Ben Cost
Crappy feet.
While humans might be mostly to blame for Antarctica’s snow melt, scientists are pointing to another surprising source of the a-thaw-calypse — penguin poop.
Per the study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, these flightless birds’ droppings are fertilizing algae blooms across the Antarctic Peninsula.
The penguins track fecal matter across the ice during their marches, prompting the spread of green snow that melts faster than its white counterpart. In turn, this bloom contributes to the rising temperatures that thaw the snow, further accelerating the greening of the frozen continent.
“The link between wildlife, nutrients, and snow algae is a critical missing component in projections of expansion of ice-free areas in Antarctica,” the study’s senior author Alia Khan, a cryosphere biogeochemist at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Phys.org. “Without accounting for these biological darkening effects, we are likely underestimating how rapidly coastal snowpacks are melting and how fast ice-free terrain will expand across Antarctica.”
