Google News Melting permafrost can unleash new biological apocalypse
by | VIEW 360
Arctic regions still conserve microbial habitats that serve as natural laboratories for understanding the mechanisms of microbial adaptation to extreme conditions. Even though they are changing rapidly, warming 2 to 3 times faster than the global average.
Research shows that mechanistic understanding of genetic exchange between microbes under stressful conditions shows evidence of virus-mediated horizontal gene transfer. According to researchers from the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Washington University, St.
Louis, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland and the Webster Central School District, Webster in the USA. The observed global warming in Siberia and the Arctic and the thawing of the permafrost could result in the release of pathogens trapped in the permafrost into the atmosphere.
Representing a possible mechanism of genesis of viruses that could emerge in the future for the development of global warming of our planet in the coming decades. The permafrost microbiome together with long-distance airlift of viruses reaching stratospheric levels, ultraviolet immunosuppression, variations in sunlight, various weather patterns, the Arctic thaw, and global warming could be the origin of new pandemics which are historically detected with cyclical regularity on our planet.
In particular there seems to be in these cyclical epidemics, including the recent outbreak of COVID-19. the release of large quantities of ancient viruses during the extensive melting of the permafrost, due to particularly long and warm arctic summers.
Pandemics begin winter to spring in a fairly small number of locations, emergence occurring where the North Polar Jet Current hovers intersecting warmer, wetter air, producing rain that deposits particulate matter with the viral crop onto a human population vulnerable.
As the case study of melting Qinghai permafrost in the Tibet Plateau shows, it provides a clear example of how an influenza epidemic has arisen related to persistent outbreaks of Qinghai avian influenza strains over the past twelve years.
Pollution and wind geography affect uptake and redistribution as can be verified by analyzing preserved permafrost and arctic air samples from other years.
Globally, exponential increases in avian flu outbreaks are not just a matter of random mutations in flu viruses, but also the result of antecedent social and environmental factors.
