Penguin Poop Might, Maybe Helping Slightly In Fight Climate Change

This tasteless penguin photograph illustrates how
"buttloads of penguin guano" as the Washington 
Post put it, could be affecting climate change a little. 

 You read the headline correctly. Scientists are studying whether penguin poop is having at least a tiny effect on climate change.  

Sounds like something Republicans would use as example of ridiculous government spending, but hear me out. (And it looks like very little, if any American taxpayer money is being used to study this).

The story, of course, takes us to Antarctica, where, of course, you will find penguins. Lots of penguins. Who really know how to take a crap, apparently. 

Per the Washington Post:

"As millions of penguins eat and breed in Antarctica, they leave behind buttloads of guano. Given that they mainly feast on fish and krill, their excrement contains large amounts of nitrogen waste that breaks down into ammonia. 

Scientist found that incredible amounts of ammonia left behind combine with sulfur compounds from the ocean and grow clouds within hours."

By the way, I love the phrase "buttloads of guano."  It should be the name of a punk rock band.

Anyway, preliminary work involving computer models suggest that clouds that the penguins help produce have a cooling effect on parts of Antarctica. But that conclusion is, well, inconclusive and complicated.

More often than not, clouds reflect the sun's heat back to space, so they have a cooling effect on the Earth. In fact, an overall decline in low clouds over the Earth in recent years partly explain why 2023 and 2024 were the two hottest years on record for the globe.

Ice reflect more sunlight than clouds do.  So in the penguin cloud poop from over the oceans surrounding Antarctica, that would help blunt climate change. If they form over Antarctic ice fields, then it might just worsen climate change a tiny bit. 

Past studies suggest that the penguin crap producing clouds have an overall benefit in the fight against climate change. 

Per Washington Post again:

"...computer models from previous studies hint that the net effect would likely cool the surface. A study in 2016 looked at clouds over the Arctic from seabird guano and showed a cooling effect over the region - exceeding 1 watt per meter square near the large seabird colonies. The study's computer models showed the clouds consisted of more droplets, but smaller ones, which reflected more sunlight back to space."

Of course, pooping penguins won't be our savior from climate change. Their effect on it is minuscule, at least in the large scheme of things. 

But it's still important to consider.  WaPo one more time as they quoted Ken Carslaw, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Leeds who was not involved in the research.

"It's vital to understand these natural environments are the baseline from which we quantify and understand human effects on climate,' (Ken) Carslaw said. 'These observations are another piece of the puzzle that will help to improve how clouds are represented in climate models'"