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Dr Brigitta Evengård, who led in putting together the historic Hannover event, was far less ready to dismiss the threat of frozen bacteria - she sees the emerging antibiotic resistance crisis as a threat multiplier.

After returning from a brief hiatus practicing medicine as Sweden's doctors were called in to support Covid-19 efforts, she told : "My worst case scenario? What's happening already every now and then, there was an outbreak in Madagascar just a few years back. And that's antibiotic resistant Pasteurella pestis... plague."

Though she admitted the risk of antibiotic-resistant diseases emerging is thin, it is not impossible.

"The antibiotic resistance pandemic will kill annually more than the coronavirus pandemic."

As for possible pandemics from the Arctic? "The two that we know could come out of the permafrost are anthrax and pox viruses, other than that it's pandora's box."
Finding a host
Once unfrozen, these permafrost microbes must find a host in order to survive. But they have a problem: there aren't many people who live in the area, and those that do - often indigenous villages - are not in frequent contact with outsiders, meaning the spread of infection would likely be limited.

"The real danger is not the thawing of permafrost per se," Dr Claverie said, "it's that humans - the Russians mainly - are now starting to exploit the Arctic regions, and are making big holes by which to excavate layers permafrost that are up to a million years old."

"This is the recipe for disaster because you have humans here and you have the virus when it is fresh. When viruses are released from the permafrost in nature, what happens? They fall into the river. They are exposed to oxygen, which is bad for viruses. They are exposed to light, which is also bad for viruses. And so they will not be revived for very long if they don't find a host very quickly."

So it's like the permafrost is the ocean, and the microbes the sharks. Don't go surfing when there are sharks in the water and things should be alright.

Dr Abergel said: " If [the viruses] come into contact with a proper host then they will reactivate. So if you put a human in a place with frozen viruses associated with pandemic then those humans could be infected and replicate the virus and start a new pandemic."

But as Dr Evengård pointed out, humans are not the only potential hosts out there.

"With climate change, we have movement of animals. People, we tend to stay in our homes if we are well enough. If you are near the coastline of Bangladesh, let's say, you may already be moving inland. The biggest migration of climate refugees is still inside their home countries. But animals, they move."

She stressed that climate change has sent the global ecosystem into flux, and it's nigh impossible to say where things will end up.

Moose and hares, for instance, are migrating north as vegetation crops up, and then of course there's birds and fish and their sometimes globe-spanning migratory patterns.

"These animals can bring microorganisms into virgin areas," Dr Evengård said, "and things will happen that we simply can't predict. You can say the Arctic is spacious and not so populated but there are people coming and going - yes, miners - and there are microorganisms coming in there with animals and even coming up from the earth. The dynamic that is ongoing is new."

The Coronavirus experience, she said, "has just reinforced my belief that what I'm doing is absolutely important."

"I'm not surprised, it's not a question of if this was going to happen it was when. The only enemy we really have is our own ignorance - that we're not preparing for this. We have all this knowledge, it's really not that new. This dynamic process that we're getting into with the climate change era. We should be better prepared, instead we're sitting here paralysed by fear."

"This is a warning from nature and it's going to happen again and again and again, I'm sure."

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Scientists fear ancient diseases could be released by the melting Arctic

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As the Arctic permafrost heats up, a group of scientists are interrogating the risk that deadly diseases from the distant past may return

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The next pandemic may come not from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice, according to new data.

Genetic analysis of soil and lake sediments from Lake Hazen, the largest high Arctic freshwater lake in the world, suggests the risk of viral spillover - where a virus infects a new host for the first time - may be higher close to melting glaciers.

The findings imply that as global temperatures rise owing to climate change, it becomes more likely that viruses and bacteria locked up in glaciers and permafrost could reawaken and infect local wildlife, particularly as their range also shifts closer to the poles.

For instance, in 2016 an outbreak of anthrax in northern Siberia that killed a child and infected at least seven other people was attributed to a heatwave that melted permafrost and exposed an infected reindeer carcass. Before this, the last outbreak in the region had been in 1941.

To better understand the risk posed by frozen viruses, Dr Stéphane Aris-Brosou and his colleagues at the University of Ottawa in Canada collected soil and sediment samples from Lake Hazen, close to where small, medium and large amounts of meltwater from local glaciers flowed in.

Next, they sequenced RNA and DNA in these samples to identify signatures closely matching those of known viruses, as well as potential animal, plant or fungal hosts, and ran an algorithm that assessed the chance of these viruses infecting unrelated groups of organisms.

The research, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggested that the risk of viruses spilling over to new hosts was higher at locations close to where large amounts of glacial meltwater flowed in - a situation that becomes more likely as the climate warms.

The team did not quantify how many of the viruses they identified were previously unknown - something they plan to do in the coming months - nor did they assess whether these viruses were capable of triggering an infection.

However, other recent research has suggested that unknown viruses can, and do, loiter in glacier ice. For instance, last year, researchers at Ohio State University in the US announced they had found genetic material from 33 viruses - 28 of them novel - in ice samples taken from the Tibetan plateau in China. Based on their location, the viruses were estimated to be approximately 15,000 years old.

In 2014, scientists at France's National Centre for Scientific Research in Aix-Marseille managed to revive a giant virus they isolated from Siberian permafrost, making it infectious again for the first time in 30,000 years. The study's author, Jean-Michel Claverie, told the BBC at the time that exposing such ice layers could be "a recipe for disaster".

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Even so, Aris-Brosou's team cautioned that predicting a high risk of spillover was not the same as predicting actual spillovers or pandemics. "As long as viruses and their 'bridge vectors' are not simultaneously present in the environment, the likelihood of dramatic events probably remains low," they wrote.

On the other hand, climate change is predicted to alter the range of existing species, potentially bringing new hosts into contact with ancient viruses or bacteria.

"The only take-home that we can confidently put forward is that as temperatures are rising, the risk of spillover in this particular environment is increasing," said Aris-Brosou. "Will this lead to pandemics? We absolutely don't know."

Also unclear is whether the potential for host switching identified in Lake Hazen is unique within lake sediments. "For all we know, it could be the same as the likelihood of host switching posed by viruses from the mud in your local pond," said Arwyn Edwards, the director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Environmental Microbiology at Aberystwyth University.

However, "we do urgently need to explore the microbial worlds all over our planet to understand these risks in context," he said. "Two things are very clear now. Firstly, that the Arctic is warming rapidly and the major risks to humanity are from its influence on our climate. Secondly, that diseases from elsewhere are finding their way into the vulnerable communities and ecosystems of the Arctic."

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Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows

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The next pandemic may come not from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice, according to new data. Genetic analysis of soil and lake sediments from Lake Hazen, the largest high Arctic freshwater lake in the world, suggests the risk of viral spillover - where a virus infects a new host for the first time - may be higher close to melting glaciers.

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The Keeling Curve is a daily record of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration maintained by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

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https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/01/1109322?gclid=CjwKCAiAv9ucBhBXEiwA6N8nYMG_TtQfyNMpUELk0uEi0XSe1ADms2mLRLLwJdEcpLWFfINZjoDbrhoC-ZIQAvD_BwE

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1. What is the greenhouse effect?

In a greenhouse, sunlight enters, and heat is retained. The greenhouse effect describes a similar phenomenon on a planetary scale but, instead of the glass of a greenhouse, certain gases are increasingly raising global temperatures.

The surface of the Earth absorbs just under half of the sun's energy, while the atmosphere absorbs 23 per cent, and the rest is reflected back into space. Natural processes ensure that the amount of incoming and outgoing energy is equal, keeping the planet's temperature stable.

However, human activity is resulting in the increased emission of so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs) which, unlike other atmospheric gases such as oxygen and nitrogen, becomes trapped in the atmosphere, unable to escape the planet. This energy returns to the surface, where it is reabsorbed.

Because more energy enters than exits the planet, surface temperatures increase until a new balance is achieved.

2. Why does the warming matter?

This temperature increase has long-term, adverse effects on the climate, and affects a myriad of natural systems. Effects include increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events - including flooding, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes - that affect millions of people and cause trillions in economic losses.

"Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions endanger human and environmental health," says Mark Radka, Chief of the UN Environment Programme's ( UNEP) Energy and Climate Branch. "And the impacts will become more widespread and severe without strong climate action."

GHG emissions are critical to understanding and addressing the climate crisis: despite an initial dip due to COVID-19, the latest UNEP Emissions Gap Report shows a rebound, and forecasts a disastrous global temperature rise of at least 2.7 degrees this century, unless countries make much greater efforts to reduce emissions.

The report found that GHG emissions need to be halved by 2030, if we are to limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

3. What are the major greenhouse gases?

Water vapour is the biggest overall contributor to the greenhouse effect. However, almost all the water vapour in the atmosphere comes from natural processes.

Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide are the major GHGs to worry about. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for up to 1,000 years, methane for around a decade, and nitrous oxide for approximately 120 years.

Measured over a 20-year period, methane is 80 times more potent than CO2 in causing global warming, while nitrous oxide is 280 times more potent.

4. How is human activity producing these greenhouse gases?

Coal, oil, and natural gas continue to power many parts of the world. Carbon is the main element in these fuels and, when they're burned to generate electricity, power transportation, or provide heat, they produce CO2.

Oil and gas extraction, coal mining, and waste landfills account for 55 per cent of human-caused methane emissions. Approximately 32 per cent of human-caused methane emissions are attributable to cows, sheep and other ruminants that ferment food in their stomachs. Manure decomposition is another agricultural source of the gas, as is rice cultivation.

Human-caused nitrous oxide emissions largely arise from agriculture practices. Bacteria in soil and water naturally convert nitrogen into nitrous oxide, but fertilizer use and run-off add to this process by putting more nitrogen into the environment.

Fluorinated gases - such as hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride - are GHGs that do not occur naturally. Hydrofluorocarbons are refrigerants used as alternatives to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which, having depleted the ozone layer,were phased out thanks to the Montreal Protocol. The others have industrial and commercial uses.

While fluorinated gases are far less prevalent than other GHGs and do not deplete the ozone layer like CFCs, they are still very powerful. Over a 20-year period, the global warming potential of some fluorinated gases is up to 16,300 times greater than that of CO2.

5. What can we do to reduce GHG emissions?

Shifting to renewable energy, putting a price on carbon, and phasing out coal are all important elements in reducing GHG emissions. Ultimately, stronger emission-reduction targets are necessary for the preservation of long-term human and environmental health.

"We need to implement strong policies that back the raised ambitions," says Mr. Radka. "We cannot continue down the same path and expect better results. Action is needed now."

During COP26, the European Union and the United States launched the Global Methane Pledge, which will see over 100 countries aim to reduce 30 per cent of methane emissions in the fuel, agriculture and waste sectors by 2030.

Despite the challenges, there is reason to be positive. From 2010 to 2021, policies were put in place to lower annual emissions by 11 gigatons by 2030 compared to what would have otherwise happened. Individuals can also join the UN's #ActNow campaign for ideas to take climate-positive actions.

By making choices that have less harmful effects on the environment, everyone can be a part of the solution and influence change. Speaking up is one way to multiply impact and create change on a much bigger scale.

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5 things you should know about the greenhouse gases warming the planet

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News stories about the climate crisis often contain mentions of greenhouse gases, and the greenhouse effect. Whilst most will find the analogy easy to understand, what exactly are these gases, and why are they contributing to the warming of the Earth?

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https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/basics-of-climate-change/?gclid=CjwKCAiAv9ucBhBXEiwA6N8nYPM417O_46DP1F6x2q4KDBQRq9ofrXidUBfQ0zFjksFfpQ6k97VVlBoCNw8QAvD_BwE

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Climate change: evidence and causes | Royal Society

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Supplementary information for the project ‘Climate Change: Evidence and causes’.