over the past 50 years the population of Antarctic emperor penguins has declined by 50 per cent. And, global warming could be to blame. Christophe Barbraud and Henri Weimerskirch, researchers at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Villers en Bois, France, have shown that an abnormally long warm spell in the southern oceans during the late 1970s could have caused the decline in the population of emperor penguins at the their colony located near Dumont d'Urville Station (66.7