Why climate change is good news for Antarctica's penguins

Shrinking glaciers in Antarctica has caused a huge increase in Adelie penguins and scientists believe that as the ice continues to melt due to global warming, their population could explode.

In East Antarctica, where 30 per cent of the penguins are found, there are around 1.14 billion breeding pairs.

See also: Wild baby penguin befriends man on beach

According to International Business Times, their numbers have increased 135-fold over the last 14,000 years thanks to the ice-free land along the Antarctic coastline.

A study by the University of Tasmania showed that the current environmental conditions are better for the Adelie penguins that they were at the end of the last Ice Age.

See also: Penguin refuses to learn to swim

Phys.org reports that lead author Jane Younger said: "Examining these birds' responses to past climate change means we can begin to predict how well Adelie penguins will respond in the future.

"Up to now, research has focused on short-term changes in terms of years or decades, but the climate change that is underway right now is likely to have effects over thousands of years. We need to consider millennial-scale trends alongside contemporary data to forecast species' abundance and distribution changes under future climate change scenarios."