In the fall of 2016, soaring temperatures caused the permafrost encasing a remote Norwegian mountainside to thaw. An ensuing flood breached the entrance tunnel of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built into the mountain as a fortress to safeguard the world’s seeds. The rush of water signified a dire warning: Not even a multi-million-dollar “doomsday” vault designed to fortify the world’s food supply can escape the wrath of a warming planet.
As humanity continues to blow past key climate thresholds, the security risks threatening the longevity of the repository also continue to climb. Launched in 2008 as a “fail-safe” site for more than 1.3 million seed samples, the vault is on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle that researchers have since identified as warming six times faster than the global average. Those looming threats are, in part, behind a grand vision a team of U.S. scientists introduced in a new study published in the journal BioScience: A new, even more secure vault, this time not just for seeds, but for plant, animal and microbial samples.
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