时间:2025-04-04 05:36:55 来源:网络整理编辑:時尚
The Global Seed Vault is sometimes called the doomsday vault, as it is meant to store the Earth's ge
The Global Seed Vault is sometimes called the doomsday vault, as it is meant to store the Earth's genetic bounty in the event of a natural or human-made disaster that wipes out vital crops needed to sustain human and animal populations.
With a capacity to store 4.5 million crop varieties and 2.5 billion seeds, it's billed as the world's largest collection of crop diversity.
While the designers of the vault seem to have taken the possibilities of nuclear wars and global pandemics into account, they may have given too little thought to one other serious threat: global warming.
SEE ALSO:NASA photos capture a strange new crack in a massive Greenland glacier and we might be doomedThe vault was purposefully constructed far away from major population centers, and was built 400 feet into an icy mountainside in Spitsbergen, Norway. The seed collection, currently numbering between 800,000 and 900,000 samples, is kept at a chilly temperature of minus-18 degrees Celsius, or about 0 degrees Fahrenheit.
The frozen soil surrounding the vault, known as permafrost, however, may turn out to be the vault's undoing as air and sea temperatures rise due to human-caused global warming. According to a report on Friday in The Guardian, a series of highly unusual wintertime heat waves during the 2016-17 winter resulted in enough thawing of the permafrost that water rushed into the vault's entrance.
Once inside the entrance, the water froze into ice as temperatures cooled again, before any water could penetrate the vault itself. However, the incident may have been enough to demonstrate that rapid Arctic climate change -- the region is warming at twice the rate of any other area on Earth -- could upend key assumptions used to build the vault, which opened with much fanfare just seven years ago.
"It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that," Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault, told theGuardian.
"A lot of water went into the start of the tunnel and then it froze to ice, so it was like a glacier when you went in," she told the paper.
The seed bank was supposed to operate on autopilot, but right now, workers are watching it around the clock, Aschim told the UK newspaper. "We must see what we can do to minimize all the risks and make sure the seed bank can take care of itself."
In comments to Mashableon Monday, Aschim said any media stories about "flooding" in the vault were overblown.
"It was not flooding but a lot of rainwater -- and it's unusual –- we have not experienced that before," she said in an email. However, she added, "The seeds and the vault [were] never at risk."
High temperatures and heavy rainfall in October 2016 caused "water intrusion" into the tunnel leading to the seed vault, she noted. Although the seeds were unaffected, she said the Norwegian government, which operates the vault, is consulting with climate researchers and taking other precautions to ensure "we do the right thing to protect the tunnel and the vault in the future."
"We will not take any chances," Aschim added.
Vault operators are making building improvements to minimize any water intrusion at the entrance to the vault. Some of these fixes include the removal of a power transformer to take away a heat source in the entranceway, as well as digging drainage ditches nearby.
Operators published press statements over the weekend laying out the renovations in detail, making clear that they concern the entranceway to the vault rather than the area where the seeds are stored.
There is no question that the climate is warming faster throughout the Svalbard Archipelago than was anticipated just a couple decades ago.
And the melting of permafrost is not just putting the seed vault's original design at risk. It is also threatening to increase the rate at which greenhouse gases are pouring into the atmosphere, since as the frozen soil melts, bacteria within it break down organic matter and emit methane, carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases. In addition, permafrost melt is destabilizing buildings, roadways, and other infrastructure in the Arctic, from Alaska to Siberia and beyond.
The past year was the warmest on record in the Arctic, and sea ice, which normally surrounds the Svalbard Archipelago, remained north of the area through much of January, which is unusually late, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
A series of warm air pulses from the North Atlantic swept across Svalbard, including the location of the seed vault, pushing air temperatures well above the freezing point. Connected to major storm systems, these waves of above average air temperatures then swept across much of the high Arctic, at times bringing air temperatures near or just above freezing at the geographic North Pole as well.
This pattern was partly due to a lack of sea ice across the Barents and Kara Seas, which provided a supply of moisture and warm air for these storms to tap into and draw into the central Arctic.
For example, on Dec. 21, 2016, the high temperature in Svalbard was 4.8 degrees Celsius, or 40.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This was nearly 19 degrees Celsius above average for the date. Similarly, on Feb. 6, 2017, Svalbard saw a high temperature of 5.9 degrees Celsius, or 42.6 degrees Fahrenheit, well above the average for the date, which was just minus-16.1 degrees Celsius, or 3 degrees above zero Fahrenheit.
Ryan Maue, a meteorologist at WeatherBell Analytics in the U.S., tweeted his suspicion about the Guardianstory's accuracy on Friday, saying that if true, the vault must be relocated. However, winter conditions are variable there as weather systems pass through. The area where the vault is located is not in an area permanently surrounded by sea ice, for example.
On other hand, if rain-on-snow melt-water simply ran into the tunnel at bottom of mountain, then it's a weather event to mitigate.
— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) May 19, 2017
These unusually mild days this winter were not isolated examples, either, as Svalbard saw more rain on snow events than average, and several other temperature spikes that threatened to break records.
The question now is whether there is anything the seed vault operators can do to bolster the facility's defenses against climate change and weather extremes, which will only grow worse in coming years.
One recent study that examined Svalbard climate trends during the past century found significant winter warming has taken place in the past few decades, and it projected that a typical winter in the year 2100 will be about 10 degrees Celsius milder than those today.
This story has been updated with comment from the Norwegian government on May 22, 2017.
Pokémon Go is so big that it has its own VR porn parody now2025-04-04 05:08
C羅官宣加盟沙特利雅得勝利,這次“總裁”的賭博值得嗎 ?(曝c羅加盟尤文圖斯)2025-04-04 05:05
內馬爾助攻後染紅姆巴佩補時造點+絕殺巴黎22025-04-04 05:01
湖人輸卻氣勢逼人!詹姆斯23分!AD31+15 ,威少三雙體現強硬意誌?(詹姆斯砍38分準三雙嗎視頻)2025-04-04 04:56
'The Flying Bum' aircraft crashes during second test flight2025-04-04 04:39
38+三雙,詹姆斯劍指得分王 !威少找回狀態 ,濃眉也傳來好消息(威少57分三雙)2025-04-04 03:27
梅西失點 姆巴佩絕殺(梅西來姆巴佩走)2025-04-04 03:12
咖咖搶先看:大滿貫孫穎莎再頭號 姆巴佩演絕殺取皇馬(姆巴佩替補破門)2025-04-04 03:04
The five guys who climbed Australia's highest mountain, in swimwear2025-04-04 03:01
為了梅西,內馬爾不願離開卡塔爾!姆巴佩VS摩洛哥布努,矛盾之爭(姆巴佩踢前腰)2025-04-04 03:00
Nancy Pelosi warns colleagues after info hacked2025-04-04 05:17
湖人19分勝魔術,詹姆斯28分威少三雙背後,哈姆3微調收奇效(詹姆斯五連三分)2025-04-04 05:14
梅西失點 姆巴佩絕殺(梅西來姆巴佩走)2025-04-04 04:34
球星悲喜夜 !哈蘭德雙響英超14場20球 內馬爾染紅 姆巴佩96分鍾絕殺(姆巴佩2射1傳內馬爾百場破門)2025-04-04 04:16
Give your kitchen sponge a rest on this adorable bed2025-04-04 03:56
C羅轉會沙特做中東球王!沙特給C羅的年薪超過當今最高的姆巴佩(曝c羅加盟尤文圖斯)2025-04-04 03:30
詹姆斯28+7+5威少砍三雙 湖人擊敗魔術終止4連敗(魔術師約翰遜三分準嗎)2025-04-04 03:29
4連敗終結!不過湖人排名依舊西部第13,威少三雙 ,詹姆斯28分,(詹姆斯17實戰好還是威少3好)2025-04-04 03:27
Pokémon Go is so big that it has its own VR porn parody now2025-04-04 02:54
梅西助姆巴佩絕殺,內馬爾賬戶被入侵,巴黎球迷呼籲萊昂納多下課(姆巴佩助攻數據)2025-04-04 02:52