Arctic 'fever' continues

"Global warming is not an unfamiliar topic to us and has been drawing attention for more than a decade now. One of the most visible aspects of this phenomenon is the increase in temperature. Long, hot summers make it impossible to squeeze a 40-degree temperature into the list of the hottest regions in the country.

In fact, in addition to the densely populated cities, the Arctic, which is off the beaten path, has also been experiencing a "constant fever".

Arctic "fever"

With the beginning of the Great Age of Navigation, people's footprints gradually spread around the world, and Antarctica was discovered as the last continent discovered by mankind at the end of the 19th century.

Compared with the mysterious Antarctic, the Arctic, on the contrary, does not have much of a mystery. As early as 2,000 years ago, a Greek named Pythias started a six-year-long journey to the North Pole, and around the first millennium AD, there were traces of human life in Greenland.

Although the Arctic has been discovered for a long time, its extreme climatic conditions and geographical location have not made mankind completely familiar with this region.

The Arctic, located at the northernmost point of the Earth, is not exposed to sunlight all year round, unlike the Antarctic, which has an average ice cover of more than 2,000 meters, but it is covered with snow and ice all year round, and low temperatures and severe cold are still its main climatic characteristics. In the Arctic, even in August, when the climate is warmest, the average temperature is only about -3°C.

However, the Arctic has been greatly affected by the gradual global warming due to increased human activity. In 2020, the United Nations Meteorological Organization says that the maximum temperature in the Arctic has reached 38°C.

The emergence of high temperatures has first led to the further melting of Arctic glaciers, and those glacial mountains covered by thin snow are thus showing their original faces, with black rocks among the white golems covered by ice and snow.

In addition to the changes in the Arctic itself, the most serious impact of the heat should be the region's land animals that feed on marine life, the most typical of which is the polar bear.

They once relied on ice floes to feed on fish and shrimp in the ocean, but as temperatures rise, the ice floes melt and they lose the environment they feed on. This change has forced them to migrate further north or change the way they feed or who they feed on.

In 2019, polar bears were spotted in a city in northern Siberia coming to feed in crowds, and the following summer, polar bears were spotted in Norway feeding on reindeer.

The next summer, polar bears were spotted hunting reindeer in Norway. In addition, the "high fever" of the Arctic region also shows us another side of the story.

The thawing of the permafrost: prehistoric remains discovered

In addition to the changes visible to the naked eye, the Arctic soil layer is also changing gradually. Once the Arctic continent's permafrost layer, which was made of cold and wind, began to dissolve as temperatures rose, presenting us with a surprise: the discovery of prehistoric remains.

Once, the largest creatures on land, mammoths, could only exist in movies such as Ice Age, but as the permafrost in the Arctic melts, they are gradually appearing before our eyes.

In 2011, humans unearthed the thigh bone of a mammoth in the permafrost of Eastern Siberia. Unlike the fossilized mammoths that were used as decoration by the Ekistrodonians, bone marrow was also present in this leg bone.

In 2012, another juvenile mammoth carcass was found in Yakutia, and even though it had been buried by glaciers for more than 10,000 years when it was discovered, all parts of the carcass were found to be intact, and even the organs were not displaced.

Since then, there have been more and more discoveries of mammoth remains, in which bone marrow and blood samples have given the mammoth the possibility of reappearance.

In addition to mammoths, remains of ancient creatures such as woolly rhinoceroses have gradually been discovered.

The emergence of these prehistoric remains has provided both more conditions for the human study of them and a touch of apprehension in the hearts of human leaps.

The crisis hidden under the ice: germs may recover

Since the remains of prehistoric creatures can be well preserved in the permafrost, will the viruses hidden under the Arctic ice also be revived again?

Human concerns about this topic are not unjustified: in 2013, humans found DNA fragments of single-celled organisms in a subglacial lake four kilometers below the Antarctic ice cap, proving that signs of life exist. By the same token, there could be life under the permafrost in the Arctic, or perhaps germs buried under the glaciers could be revived.

In addition, ancient remains may also serve as carriers of germs. If in the process of studying them, the germs they carry are revived, they may deal a fatal blow to mankind, given that mankind knows very little about them.

In addition, viruses that once disappeared from human life may also reappear due to climate warming.

In 2016, anthrax re-emerged in Russia's Siberian region, killing more than a dozen humans as well as more than 2,000 reindeer as a result. Puzzlingly, however, the source of the infection was not found for this appearance of the virus, and it was not until later that it was discovered that its most likely cause was the bodies buried underground for more than seventy years, who had died from anthrax infection.

Now, due to the disintegration of the permafrost, anthrax has once again emerged among humans using the corpses as a vector.

With the above examples, the concern about the virus is not unreasonable.

The gradual increase in temperatures in the Arctic has created a sense of crisis among humans amid a new harvest. After all, the new crown has been affecting our normal life for three years in today's society, and if the rising Arctic temperatures lead to the creation of new viruses, life will be even more difficult for humans.

In fact, for being buried for tens of thousands of years virus, we do not need to be pessimistic. The changing times and climate may make them obsolete due to their inability to adapt to the environment.

But the changes in the Arctic should also sound the alarm for humans. As a major factor affecting global climate change, we should not just give and take the living environment. Only by living in harmony with nature can we achieve longevity.