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The question of the day: “Scientists predict that new diseases will emerge when Antarctica is fully ‘thawed’, do you believe?”
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The response ofAurélie Chan:
The thawing of permafrost in the polar regions poses many problems. The researchers found that some microbes produced a lot of methane and carbon dioxide, which are greenhouse gases, since the thawing of the permafrost in the Arctic region.
This is because some microbes can survive for very long periods of time under certain freezing conditions, with very few nutrients, using minerals as a source of energy.
Arctic permafrost contains an immense accumulation of plant and animal matter, trapped for centuries in its frozen layers. Currently, permafrost stores between 1.330 and 1.580 billion tonnes of carbon. The arctic permafrost zone makes up only 15% of the earth’s soil surface, but contains one-third of the soil’s organic carbon.
Melting permafrost can therefore quickly send us into a vicious cycle (positive feedback) of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.
A consequence of global warming
But there is another kind of risk that lies ahead. Several prehistoric bacteria discovered are resistant to antibiotics. Melting permafrost can potentially release pathogenic bacteria and viruses that can be harmful to current living species.
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As for the Antarctic ice sheet, if it were to melt completely, which would occur long after the other ice caps had melted, the combined sea level rise would be about 120 meters higher than today. ‘hui. Antarctica has been in place for 34 million years, making it difficult to assess the risk of finding harmful bacteria in its ice cap and permafrost.
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