The emperor penguin faces extinction by the end of the century.

Researchers in America say the species - documented in the 2005 film March of the Penguins - is threatened by climate change in the Antarctic.

If rising temperatures continue to melt sea ice at current rates, the population of a large emperor penguin colony in Terre Adelie, Antarctica, will shrink from 3,000 to just 400 breeding pairs, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI).

The prediction is based on evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If replicated in other colonies the species could be devastated.

Stephanie Jenouvrier, a biologist from WHOI, said: “If the future behaves anything like the IPCC models predict, the Terre Adelie population will decline, probably dramatically.”

Hal Caswell, co-author of the report, added: “The key to the analysis was deciding to focus not on average climate conditions, but on fluctuations that occasionally reduce the amount of available sea ice. This analysis focuses on a single population because of the excellent data available for it. But patterns of climate change and sea ice in the Antarctic are an area of intense research interest now. It remains to be seen how these changes will affect the entire species throughout Antarctica.”

Research in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, used mathematical models to predict the effect on penguins of climate change and the resulting loss of sea ice. It plays a critical role in the Antarctic ecosystem - not only as a platform for penguins to breed and feed - but as a grazing ground for krill, tiny crustaceans that thrive on algae on the underside of the ice. Krill, in turn, are a food source for fish, seals, whales, and penguins.

One fluctuation and subsequent sea ice reduction in Terre Adelie during the 1970s led to a 50 per cent decline in emperor penguins.

The study also used data collected by French scientists working in Terre Adelie, beginning in the 1960s.

Predictions suggest that the geographic range of Antarctic penguins may shrink following global warming because the extent of the continent limits their movement south.

This month the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds warned that a species of penguin has been disappearing from a British island in the Southern Atlantic at a rate of 100 a day. Millions of northern rockhoppers used to live on Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island, but populations have plummeted by more than 90 per cent in the last 50 years. Climate change, overfishing and changes in marine ecosystems were all possible reasons for the decline.

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