The Arctic, one of the harshest places on Earth, has extremely low temperatures and is covered in snow and ice all year round.
However, monitoring of the EU's Copernicus Plan shows that the Arctic town of Saskila recorded a temperature of 31.9 degrees Celsius on June 20, the highest temperature in the town since 1936 before the arrival of the summer solstice. On June 20, surface temperatures across Siberia generally exceeded 35°C, with temperatures near Vykoyansk in the Arctic reaching 48°C, well above the average temperature of previous years.
In fact, this is not the first time that the Arctic has experienced hot weather, as soon as May this year, the local temperature has reached more than 30 degrees Celsius. In recent years, the number of hot weather in the Arctic has also increased.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > prehistoric remains</h1>
The perennial "high fever" in the Arctic is definitely not a good thing for the earth, but for the "mammoth ivory hunter", this is indeed a rare opportunity for gold panning.
Due to the high temperature weather, the permafrost layer will thaw, and the permafrost layer is buried with a large number of mammoths, it is estimated that the local permafrost stores about 500,000 tons of mammoth ivory. One of the more intact mammoth tusks weighs about 50-60 kilograms and can sell for at least $30,000 each.
In addition to mammoth tusks, other ancient creatures are stored in the Siberian permafrost, including extinct cave bears, cave lions and so on.
Because the temperature in the permafrost is below 0 degrees Celsius all year round, this inhibits microbial activity and even enters a dormant state, and it is precisely because of this that the remains of organisms that died in ancient times can be preserved in the permafrost layer, and even preserved very intact.
Scientists once found the remains of a cave bear that had been frozen for about 30,000 years on an island in Siberia. What is very rare is that this cave bear is very well preserved, teeth, nose and even internal organs are almost not decomposed, and without knowing it, I thought that this cave bear had just died not long ago.
In the permafrost of Yakutia, Siberia, Russia, a small lion dating from 20,000 to 50,000 years old has been unearthed, which is a small cave lion, and it is speculated that the age of the lion is only 1-2 months old. It is reasonable to say that the water content of the animal cub is higher, and the remains are more easily decomposed by antimicrobials, but in the permafrost environment, it has been buried here for tens of thousands of years, still retaining the appearance of when it just died.
In 2020, Swedish paleontologist Darren identified the remains of a bird excavated from the Siberian permafrost and found that the bird lived about 46,000 years ago and is the ancestor of two lark subspecies that inhabit the steppes of northern Russia and Mongolia.
The above biological remains are only a small part of the permafrost layer, and when the Arctic continues to "high fever does not recede", there will be more and more permafrost melting, and the prehistoric biological remains in the permafrost layer will continue to appear.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > germs under the permafrost</h1>
The appearance of the remains of ancient creatures frozen under the permafrost layer is not a good thing. Because under the permafrost is not only ancient creatures, but also germs. The constant appearance of hot weather in the Arctic region may lead to the revival of germs sleeping in the permafrost.
In 2016, on the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia, Russia, five adults and three children contracted anthrax, and one of the 12-year-olds died. Anthrax is a zoonotic disease that has also resulted in the deaths of 2,300 reindeer in the area.
Curiously, this germ has not been found in the local area for many years, so where does the source of this disease come from?
Experts believe that global warming has led to the outbreak, which turned out to have been an anthrax 75 years ago, which led to a large number of reindeer and human deaths. After the death of these creatures, the remains were buried in shallow places (the permafrost layer is very hard and very difficult to dig), and as the local temperature rises, some of the anthrax bacteria carried by the remains are released, and the pathogens may have entered the local ecological chain with the ablation of ice and snow, resulting in another local anthrax fever after a gap of 75 years.
In addition to anthrax, there must be other viruses preserved in the local permafrost, although not all viruses are harmful to humans, but once a virus can circulate in humans, it will also have a greater impact on humans.
In addition, the melting of the permafrost layer will also cause the greenhouse gases contained in the permafrost layer to be released, such as methane, which will also aggravate global warming. More importantly, the reflection of sunlight in the permafrost layer is very strong, while the reflection of sunlight by the soil is weak, and when the permafrost layer continues to melt, more and more solar energy will remain on the earth, causing the earth to warm up.
#Arctic Heat##Arctic##永冻层 #