Global Warming
Global warming is the warming up of the planet above the temperature it "should" be. It is such a concern at the moment as it seems that the temperature is rising at a rate far faster than ever before and it is thought that it may be the activities of the human population over the last 150 years or so that is doing it.
Mean temperatures over the whole planet have risen by about 0.74° C (1.33° F) in the last 100 years. More than half of this increase has happened in the last 25 years. The temperature records used to calculate this are extensive, they have been assembled from thousands of observation sites on land and sea covering a large, representative portion of the Earth's surface. Checks and allowances have been made for any bias that may have arisen from the weather stations or instrument changes.
This is a worry because while the planet can cope with changes in temperature which are known to have happened over periods of tens and hundreds of thousands of years in the past and certainly over millions of years, we don't know how it will cope with relatively rapid changes in temperature.
Wildlife
Penguins .
There are many different species of penguins in Antarctica, including the huge and colorful emperor penguin, the smaller Adelie, the gentoo, the chinstrap penguin, the rockhopper, the king, the macaroni and more. In all there are 21 species of penguin scattered throughout the southern hemisphere. Penguins are great swimmers. They can swim so fast, if they're trying, for instance, to escape the jaws of a leopard seal, that they can shoot out of the water 7 feet into the air onto a safe ice floe.