In recent years, natural disasters on the earth have occurred frequently, earthquakes, torrential rains, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and other serious natural disasters have followed, and just a few days ago, scientists dug up the corpses of prehistoric creatures in the Arctic.
If arctic glaciers melt, it will not only be a variety of prehistoric viruses running out, but also the large amounts of methane that the Arctic has hoarded, and at that time, global warming will become uncontrollable, that is, as more and more methane leaks from the Arctic, global warming will also increase.
Why are there so many corpses and viruses of ancient creatures in the Arctic?
A few years ago, scientists found a 57,000-year-old corpse in the Dawson City area of the Nada Yukon region of the Arctic permafrost, which was a wolf mummy, which was named Zhur at the time, and the body was surprisingly well preserved, its fur and the papillae on its lips could be clearly seen, and even the contents of its stomach were examined.
In addition to the wolf cub Zhur, in 2019 a relatively well-preserved puppy carcass was found in the Siberian permafrost; in 2020, scientists found a bird remains about 46,000 years old in northeastern Siberia, which was identified as a kind of horned lark.
In addition to the bacteria and viruses carried by the animal carcasses themselves, many sealed viruses have been found in the Arctic permafrost.
In 2014, French biologists extracted a virus that had been engulfed in permafrost for up to 30,000 years in a study. In experiments, they reheated the virus quickly after reheating it in the laboratory. Scientists involved in the study warned that all unknown pathogens frozen in the soil could reawaken due to a warming climate.
In 2016, it was reported that the long-extinct anthrax virus in northern Russia had killed 2,300 reindeer, one child, 72 herders hospitalized, and 63 people evacuated.
Finally, it was found that these viruses came from the thawed permafrost, which may have been the carcasses of people or animals infected with the anthrax virus, due to the thawing of the frozen soil, these viruses entered the groundwater for human drinking, and there is a legend that the carcass of an elk ran out after thawing to release the bacillus anthracis.
The full name of "anthrax" is Bacillus anthracis, which is the largest Gram-positive bacillus. Unlike general bacteria, Bacillus anthracis has capsule formation in the body and can form spores in vitro and under unsuitable conditions. Moreover, the spores made bacillus anthracite more resistant and difficult to kill, and even during World War II, the British used it as a biological and chemical weapon.
How much does Arctic methane affect the planet?
It is understood that the Arctic is a natural methane reservoir, glaciers and permafrost under the accumulation of a large amount of methane, the Arctic release of methane has become very common, but with the area of more and more ice and the melting of the permafrost layer, methane release rate is also getting faster and faster, which is also a major reason for the intensification of global warming.
As early as 2006, Walter wrote in the journal Nature that the melting of the Siberian permafrost would lead to a exponential increase in methane release and possibly even accelerate climate change.
"Siberia's lake area is five times larger than my 2006 measurements, an unprecedented global event, and inertia has accelerated the melting of more permafrost," she later said. At that time, she herself did not expect the speed of change to be so fast. At the same time, the release of methane has increased exponentially, and it has become the strongest propeller of the greenhouse effect.
If you can't understand the speed of its change, then you can judge the global climate change from many phenomena, take the number of snowfall in winter now, the number of snow around you is obviously getting less and less.
Even Mount Everest is starting to grow grass, Antarctic temperatures have broken through 20 degrees Celsius, sea levels have risen, and some extreme weather has become more frequent, and super typhoons may be directly related to the greenhouse effect.
In order to study the impact of methane emissions on climate warming in the Arctic, researchers at NASA's Vulnerability Experiment in the Arctic region have flown aircraft in the region no less than 400 times since 2017, and after testing infrared detection technology 1 billion times on 51,800 square kilometers of land, about 2 million methane hotspots have been found.
In response to this situation, some American experts said: Today, human beings must pay attention to the accelerated global warming of the release of methane in the Arctic, otherwise in addition to the accelerated rise of sea level will cause the coastal area to be submerged, the rising temperature will also greatly affect the entire earth's ecological circle, thus threatening the survival of human beings.