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Arctic Stronghold of World's Seeds Flooded After Permafrost Melts (theguardian.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the threatened-by-climate-change dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world's most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity's food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel. The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide "failsafe" protection against "the challenge of natural or man-made disasters". But soaring temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the world's hottest ever recorded year led to melting and heavy rain, when light snow should have been falling. "It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that," said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault. "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 Guardian. Fortunately, the meltwater did not reach the vault itself, the ice has been hacked out, and the precious seeds remain safe for now at the required storage temperature of -18C. But the breach has questioned the ability of the vault to survive as a lifeline for humanity if catastrophe strikes.

3 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. I guess they didn't run that simulation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Seems like an event as "natural" as ice melt would have been considered when the vault was located.

    1. Re:I guess they didn't run that simulation by Esteanil · · Score: 5, Interesting

      “We did this calculation; if all the ice in the world melted—Greenland, Arctic, Antarctic, everything—and then we had the world's largest recorded tsunami right in front of the seed vault. So, very high sea levels and the worlds largest Tsunami. What would happen to the seed vault?” Fowler says. “We found that the seed vault was somewhere between a five and seven story building above that point. It might not help the road leading up to the seed vault, but the seeds themselves would be ok."

      http://www.popsci.com/seed-vau...

      --
      I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
  2. The level of incompetence.. by boulat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just looking at the pictures ( https://www.theguardian.com/en... ) of the vault itself its apparent these people have no idea what they are doing:

    1. The plastic boxes are not waterproof in the event of a flood the entire supply will be compromised
    2. There are no cages in place to keep the plastic containers from falling off the shelves in the event of an earthquake or flood, and compromising their integrity
    3. The ground floor is permafrost - not actual concrete or any sort of reinforced material, so any lifeform that is capable of digging can penetrate this 'vault'