Gould
Gould is a known penguin breeding site in the Queen Elizabeth Land, at 77°43'S 47°39'W. Emperor penguins have been recorded here. Emperors breed on sea ice rather than land, which makes this one of the sites whose very surface disappears in a bad ice year. The sea around it has gained ice at 4.17 points a decade since 1979 — 7.4 times its own standard error.
Species recorded here
The sea ice around this colony, 1979–2024
Averaged over 24 ocean cells within 100 km, the April–November sea-ice concentration here has moved +4.17 ± 1.13 points per decade — fitted 80% in 1979 to 99% in 2024. That is a real gain: the slope is more than twice its own standard error above zero. Most emperor colonies are in this group, which is not the story usually told about them. Over the fledging window it reads +5.63 ± 1.90.
Two limits, and both matter. First, this is not the fast ice the birds breed on. At 25 km the land-attached ice emperors breed on is narrower than one cell and cannot be resolved. This is the sea around the colony, not the platform under it. Second, the archive ends 2024-12-31 — it is a climate record, not a current reading, and the live sea-ice figure on the wire is a different product entirely.
Is this an independent measurement?
This site is one of the 56 independent places, and it stands alone. No other known breeding site lies within 200 km of it, so nothing measured here is a second reading of a neighbour's water. Most sites are not in that position: the 728 measurable sites in this archive thin to 56 places.
In the 2023 ice year — the last one this archive holds — the sea ice here lasted 365 days, which is this site's 32nd shortest season of 41 and above its own median of 365. It was below the median at 657 of the 728 sites measured here and at 44 of the 56 independent places, which is the most widespread short season in the record: the whole archive is drawn in one frame.
Asked whether this is a trend or a step
Every fitted series on this site was made to nominate its own worst break year against a Monte Carlo null, with no event supplied. 1 of the figures published for this site came back flagged: the strongest is April–November sea ice · 1979–2024, which breaks at 1987 — the 1988 satellite change, which the site's second gate already refits around. The fitted direction survives at all of them, so what is in doubt is the size rather than the sign.
| Measurement | Break | Plain | With one step | Step | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April–November sea ice · 1979–2024 | 1987 | +4.17 | +1.12 | +16.25 ± 1.85 | same sign |
Slopes are per decade — points of concentration for the sea-ice windows, days for the dates and season lengths. How every series on this site was asked →
Why there is no count on this page
Penguins are too small to resolve from orbit. What is visible is the guano stain a colony leaves on the ice, which is why counting from satellite is a colour problem rather than a counting problem — and it is not solved. Our own detector correlates at r = −0.16 against ground counts across eight colonies, which is no relationship at all. Until that is fixed, this site publishes locations and says nothing about numbers. A number we cannot defend would be worse than none.