Surveillance system identifies penguins as they waddle to the beach.

The problem of keeping track of thousands of near-identical African penguins may have been solved. Researchers have developed surveillance technology that can identify individual birds and then monitor them over long periods of time. The team says the system will boost our understanding of the animals; it could even help ecologists solve the mystery of how long penguins live. The researchers say it could also track other species, from cheetahs to sharks. The technology is on display at the Royal Society's Summer Exhibition.

Peter Barham, professor of physics at Bristol University, who developed the Penguin Recognition System, said: "Until now, if you wanted to follow penguins you would use metal flipper bands, which have an ID code." To read them, ecologists need to capture the animals and record the tag number. But this is time intensive and error prone, says Professor Barham.

Especially when dealing with large numbers of birds such as the 20,000-strong population of African penguins that live on Robben Island, South Africa, that have been the focus of this study. These bands have also been suggested to be damaging to some species and there is clear evidence that they are, possibly due to the wear of the feathers that they cause," he added. We really wanted to find a way to automatically monitor these birds without harming them."

The technology, first tested on captive penguins, works by spotting the birds' spots. Here, it identifies David the penguin. The new tracking system is able to detect unique markings on the penguins. Adult African penguins carry black spots on their chests; scientists believe that no two penguins have the same pattern. Professor Barham said: "We set a camera up in a location where the penguins will regularly walk past on their way to or from the sea. Every image that the camera processes is then sent back to a computer."

The software has been trained to recognise if there are any penguins in the camera's field of vision. If there are, it looks at the spot patterns to determine whether it is a bird that it recognises or new penguin. It then records the ID number and the date, time and location of the sighting. Professor Barham told BBC News: "It means we can track penguins out in the wild, in real time and with real accuracy."

New species
The technology is already having an impact on tracking the penguins on Robben Island. Professor Barham believes it will help to better understand the animals both in terms of their movement patterns and behaviour.

"The information we will get is going to be enormous, and there are questions we can answer that nobody has even thought of before." The researchers now plan to use a moving camera, which can pan, zoom and tilt to track the animals. The team also want to try the technology on species other than African penguins.

Professor Barham said: "For any species with patterned plumage, cheetahs or whale sharks for example, then the same technology could use the patterns as individual identifiers.

"You just have to train the system to spot a particular species, then to find the areas where the pattern is likely to occur and then to process this information."

Dr Tilo Burghardt, from the Department of Computer Science at Bristol University, who has worked on the system, added: "We believe the new technology will enable biologists to identify and monitor large numbers of diverse species cheaply, quickly and automatically."

An unpublished study by the world's leading experts has revealed that airlines are pumping 20 per cent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than estimates suggest, with total emissions set to reach between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion tonnes annually by 2025.

The report, by four government-funded research bodies, is one of the most authoritative estimates of the growth of pollutants produced by the industry. It was presented to a conference co-organised by the United States' Federal Aviation Authority but not given a wider audience.

Combining data produced by the leading emissions-modelling laboratories in the US, Britain and France, the study found that the number of people seriously affected by aircraft noise will rise from 24 million in 2000 to 30.3 million by 2025, despite the introduction of quieter jets, and that the amount of nitrogen oxides around airports, produced by aircraft engines, will rise from 2.5 million tonnes in 2000 to 6.1 million tonnes in 2025.

Jeff Gazzard, a spokesman for the Aviation Environment Federation, the group that uncovered the report, said: "Growth of CO2 emissions on this scale will comfortably outstrip any gains made by improved technology and ensure aviation is an even larger contributor to global warming by 2025 than previously thought. Governments must take action to put a cap on air transport's unrestrained growth."

The report, Trends in Global Noise and Emissions From Commercial Aviation for 2000 through 2025, was presented last year to the USA/Europe Air Traffic Management Seminar in Barcelona but withheld from wider publication.

Its authors at the US Department of Transport, the European air traffic management body, Eurocontrol, Manchester Metropolitan University and the technology company QinetiQ predict that CO2 will rise from its current level of 670 million tonnes to up to 1.48 billion tonnes by 2025. This exceeds the previous estimate, made in 2004, of 1.03 billion tonnes by 2025. The growth in aviation CO2 means that the highest forecast for aviation emissions produced by the International Panel on Climate Change will be met or exceeded.

The aviation industry, which is exempt from the Kyoto protocol on reducing greenhouse gases, claims the introduction of new technology over the next 25 years means that the contribution of flying to global CO2 emissions will rise from 2 per cent of the total to 5 per cent by 2050. Critics claim the true figure will be much higher because it does not include the CO2 reductions being made elsewhere.

The International Air Transport Association, which represents 240 airlines, said it was working towards producing binding targets to reduce CO2 emissions. "With fuel costs doubling in the last year, airlines already have an incentive to work towards greater efficiency," a spokesman said. "There has been a 70 per cent improvement in fuel efficiency in the last four decades. Aviation is a benchmark of environmental responsibility for others to follow."