Title:
The ferocious summer : Palmer's penguins and the warming of Antarctica
Author:
Hooper, Meredith.
ISBN:
9781846680083
9781846680342
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
London : Profile, 2007.
Physical Description:
xix, 299 pages, [16] pages of plates : color illustrations, maps, color portrait ; 24 cm
Contents:
Introduction: News from the front line -- 1. Ice Age -- 2. Punta to Palmer -- 3. The life of a penguin -- 4. Remnant Eden -- 5. Seeing for myself -- 6. A field season from Hell -- 7. Penguin pebbles -- 8. Palmer Day -- 9. An absolute wake-up call -- 10. Light-bulb moments -- 11. Collecting birds -- 12. Sunny day science -- 13. Giant petrels -- 14. Meat and two veg -- 15. A view from the predator's mouth -- 16. Dream Island -- 17. Boondoggle Day -- 18. The inner circle -- 19. The sound of extinct -- 20. The south islands -- 21. The year of reckoning -- 22. Crunches and crunched -- 23. Losing days -- 24. The weight of a fledgling -- 25. Not a standard day -- 26. South polar skuas and kelp gulls -- 27. A pair of legs, a pile of bones -- 28. Last island on the geep chick handling tour -- 29. Summer's end -- 30. Voyage home -- 31. What was happening? -- 32. Local becomes global.
Abstract:
The Antarctic Peninsula is for all of us an early warning system. This brilliant book tells the story of Antarctic warming and of how scientists are piecing together the jigsaw of causes and impacts, here in particular through a study of the changing lives and habits of a group of Adelie penguins. To write this book Meredith Hooper worked with key scientists in bases, on ice breakers and in research vessels. Her story is very precisely located in time and space, focusing on the work and ideas of individual scientists and on the local animals. In it she memorably brings an outsiders non-specialist awareness to the crucial understanding of what is happening, now, to the planet we share.