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Scientists Revive 'Zombie' Virus After 50,000 Years Trapped in Siberian Permafrost
Researchers documented 13 never-before-seen viruses that have been lying dormant, frozen in thick ice, over tens of thousands of years.
Nov 26, 2022
As our world continues to warm up, vast areas of permafrost are rapidly melting, releasing material that's been trapped for up to a million years. This includes uncountable numbers of microbes that have been lying dormant for hundreds of millennia.
To study these emerging microbes, scientists from the French National Center for Scientific Research have now revived a number of these "zombie viruses" from the Siberian permafrost, including one thought to be nearly 50,000 years old - a record age for a frozen virus returning to a state capable of infecting other organisms.
The team behind the study, led by microbiologist Jean-Marie, says these ancient viruses are potentially a significant threat to public health, and further study needs to be done to assess the danger that these infectious agents could pose as the permafrost melts.
The researchers warned it may just be the tip of the iceberg:
"One-quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost," researchers wrote in the paper.
"Due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect. Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times."
\u201cA 48,500-year-old virus has been revived from Siberian permafrost\nSeven viruses from the Siberian permafrost have been revived and replicated themselves in the lab \u2013 including the oldest revived so far\nhttps://t.co/mMGMXEBdsy\u201d— Samuel Jacobs (@Samuel Jacobs) 1669399746
According to Global News:
In 2014, the same researchers unearthed a 30,000-year-old virus trapped in permafrost, the BBC reported. The discovery was groundbreaking because after all that time, the virus was still able to infect organisms. But now, they've beaten their own record by reviving a virus that is 48,500 years old.
"If the authors are indeed isolating live viruses from ancient permafrost, it is likely that the even smaller, simpler mammalian viruses would also survive frozen for eons," virologist Eric Delwart from the University of California, San Francisco told New Scientist.
\u201cOkay. I've seen this movie and it didn't end well...and seriously what's that name again?\n\nPandoravirus? \ud83d\ude2c\n\n"The revived virus has been given the name Pandoravirus yedoma, which acknowledges its size and the type of permafrost soil that it was found in."\nhttps://t.co/F5yHqCTZv9\u201d— Chris Hendel (@Chris Hendel) 1669408433
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Record-High Arctic Temperature of 38degC 'More Befitting the Mediterranean,' UN Warns
"This new Arctic record is one of a series of observations... that sound the alarm bells about our changing climate."
Dec 14, 2021
The World Meteorological Organization on Tuesday confirmed that a new record-high Arctic temperature was set during this summer's devastating Siberian heatwave when the Russian town of Verkhoyansk hit 38degC or 100.4degF.
"The WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes has never had so many ongoing simultaneous investigations."
"The temperature, more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic," was measured at a meteorological observing station on June 20 amid an "exceptional and prolonged" Siberian heatwave, the United Nations weather agency said.
"Average temperatures over Arctic Siberia reached as high as 10degC above normal for much of summer last year, fueling devastating fires, driving massive sea ice loss, and playing a major role in 2020 being one of the three warmest years on record," the agency explained.
The Arctic, which has been heating up for over a century due to greenhouse gas pollution, is one of the fastest-warming regions in the world. That is especially alarming considering that thawing permafrost portends the release of additional carbon dioxide and methane--leading to accelerated warming that causes further thawing in a vicious feedback loop.
According to a recent study, the Arctic has been heating up three times faster than the rest of the globe for the past five decades--one of many developments that climate scientists and activists have pointed to when appealing for more ambitious policies to transition away from fossil fuels rapidly, the primary source of planet-wrecking emissions.
According to WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, "This new Arctic record is one of a series of observations reported to the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes that sound the alarm bells about our changing climate."
In addition to Mediterranean-like temperatures in the Arctic, the Antarctic continent also experienced a new record-high temperature of 18.3degC in 2020, said Taalas.
Moreover, he added, "WMO investigators are currently seeking to verify temperature readings of 54.4degC recorded in both 2020 and 2021 in the world's hottest place, Death Valley in California, and to validate a new reported European temperature record of 48.8degC in the Italian island of Sicily this summer."
"The WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes has never had so many ongoing simultaneous investigations," Taalas lamented.
This year, in light of recent trends, a panel of experts created the new category of "highest recorded temperature at or north of 66.50, the Arctic Circle," for the U.N. weather agency's archive.
As a result of the new Arctic category being added, both Polar regions are now represented in the international record books. The WMO has listed temperature extremes for Antarctica and its environs since 2007.
Alluding to the 38degC temperature recorded in Verkhoyansk in June, WMO evaluation committee member Blair Trewin from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said that "verifying records of this type is important in having a reliable base of evidence as to how our climate's most extreme extremes are changing."
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Siberia Faces 'Airpocalypse' as Unprecedented Wildfires Engulf Region in Toxic Smoke
"Wildfires in Siberia have now burned through 3.7 million acres of land, destroying vast swaths of forest. We are in a climate emergency."
Jul 21, 2021
A monitoring service warned Wednesday that the Siberian city of Yakutsk is experiencing an "airpocalypse" as devastating wildfires engulf the typically frigid--but, thanks to the climate crisis, increasingly warm--region in toxic smoke.
Throughout late Wednesday afternoon and early evening local time, according to Plume Labs, air quality in Yakutsk ranged from "dire" to "extreme" to "airpocalypse," categories that indicate dangerous levels of pollutants in the atmosphere. Earlier this week, Yakutsk was forced to suspend flights at its airport due to poor visibility.
"High levels of particulate matter and possibly also chemicals including ozone, benzene, and hydrogen cyanide are thought likely to make this one of the world's worst ever air pollution events," The Guardian reported, referring to the fires that have scorched 3.7 million acres of land in northeastern Siberia in recent days.
Alexey Yaroshenko, head of the forest department at Greenpeace Russia, told the U.K.-based newspaper that "for many years, propaganda has made people think that the climate crisis is a fiction, and if not fiction, that it will only benefit Russia, since it will become warmer and more comfortable."
"Now the situation is starting to change," said Yaroshenko. "Little by little, people are beginning to understand that the climate is really changing, and the consequences are really catastrophic. But the majority of society and the majority of politicians are still very far from understanding the real scale of the problem."
\u201cUnprecedented wildfires in Siberia have now burned through 3.7 million acres of land, destroying vast swathes of forest. We are in a climate emergency. https://t.co/GEeV9EeEFD\u201d— Jason Hickel (@Jason Hickel) 1626810939
Aysen Nikolayev, governor of Siberia's Yakutia region, told reporters over the weekend that "the situation with wildfires in our republic is very difficult."
"We are experiencing the driest summer in the past 150 years in Yakutia, and the month of June was the hottest on record," said Nikolayev. "This, together with the dry thunderstorms that occur nearly daily in our republic, brought about significant wildfires."
Speaking to the Associated Press, one local resident said that "we can't see each other because of the smoke, our eyes are burning, and overall the smoke is very dangerous for the health of us villagers."
"We see on television planes that are dropping water on the burning forest but they aren't sending these planes to help us for some reason," he added. "Why is there no help?"
\u201cRussia's air forces have joined firefighters battling wildfires in Siberia\u2019s Yakutia, where fire has torn through more than 1.5 million hectares of land \u2935\ufe0f\u201d— Al Jazeera English (@Al Jazeera English) 1626868801
The latest wildfires mark the third consecutive year that Siberia has been ravaged by historic blazes, which scientists have attributed to dramatic warming fueled by the human-caused climate crisis.
"Last year, the record-setting fires in the remote Siberian region of Yakutia released roughly as much carbon dioxide as did all the fuel consumption in Mexico in 2018," the New York Times reported late last week. "On some days this month, thick smoke hung over the capital, Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world, making residents' eyes water and scraping their throats. Outside the city, villagers are consumed by the battle with fire, shoveling trenches to keep it away from their homes and fields, quenching their thirst by digging up the ice sheets embedded in the ground."
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