The Cloud Makers

Penguin feces act as great fertilizer thanks to their rich concentrations of nitrogen, phosphate, and other nutrients necessary for plants. 

But scientists recently discovered that the birds’ droppings – also known as guano – play an unexpected role in the formation of clouds over Antarctica.  

“This shows a deep connection between the natural ecosystem emissions and atmospheric processes, where emissions from both local seabird and penguin colonies and marine microbiology have a synergistic role that can impact clouds and climate,” Matthew Boyer, lead author of the new study, said in a statement. 

For their study, Boyer and his colleagues focused on a colony of 60,000 Adélie penguins living near the Marambio Base on the Antarctic Peninsula. The penguins mainly feed on krill and fish, and produce a guano rich in nitrogen. This nitrogen gas breaks down into ammonia and mixes sulfur compounds in the atmosphere that later turn into aerosol particles. 

The particles eventually provide a surface for water vapor to condense and form clouds, explained Smithsonian Magazine. 

The researchers realized this after setting up detection instruments five miles away from the colony to measure the concentration of ammonia and other gases in the atmosphere.  

They found that when the wind blew from the birds’ colony their devices picked up huge concentrations as high as 13.5 parts per billion, which is 1,000 times higher than the baseline value measured by the instruments. 

These spikes in ammonia were followed by fog formation within three to four hours, indicating a rapid increase in cloud-seeding aerosol particles.  

The findings further confirm ammonia’s role in cloud formation over Antarctica, with the researchers noting that the new study tested the connection to Adélie penguin droppings. 

But they remain unclear about how these specific clouds affect the climate on the frozen continent – or the planet’s, for that matter. 

“Clouds influence the surface radiation budget, which affects surface temperature. Therefore, clouds impact climate change,” Boyer told Popular Science. “This is true across the entire planet, not just in Antarctica.” 

They did not analyze how the guano-influenced clouds impacted temperatures but hope that future research can answer that question. 

“This study provides the most compelling evidence to date that ammonia and sulfur compounds… are an important source of cloud condensation nuclei during summertime in Antarctica,” said Greg Wentworth, an atmospheric scientist with the government of Alberta, Canada, who was not involved with the new research. “How remarkable is it that emissions from penguin poop and phytoplankton can kick-start chemistry in the atmosphere that can alter clouds and affect climate?”