Water escaping from melting ice and the emergence of new hosts in new places due to global warming could release viruses frozen in the Arctic Circle ice, potentially leading to new outbreaks. In a study published on Wednesday, researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa warned that the risk of epidemics could increase because of viruses escaping as Arctic ice melts.
Their research is based on the premise that viruses need hosts – humans, animals, plants or fungi – to replicate, and can sometimes move from one host to another, as they did in the case of the coronavirus outbreak.
Researchers analysing soil samples from Lake Hazen, in the northernmost part of Canada, just outside the Arctic Circle, concluded that this was the first time the viruses had found a new host in the lake. The study found that the risk of virus spread was higher in the part of the lake closer to the Arctic, where large amounts of glacial water flowed into the lake. They added that the amount of glacier water is increasing with global warming.
The researchers did not say how many unknown strains of the virus had been identified and did not yet analyse whether the identified strains could cause epidemics.
The spread of a possible outbreak is still unpredictable
A warming climate is causing potential hosts such as mosquitoes to migrate to previously uninhabited areas, making the spread of a possible outbreak unpredictable, said Audrée Lemieux, one of the research participants.
Previous research has already confirmed that unknown viruses may be present in glacial ice: in 2021, a team of researchers at Ohio University in the US reported finding 33 viruses – including 28 unknown viruses – on the Tibetan Plateau, some 15,000 years old.
However, the Canadian study, just published, reiterates that the virus and the host or vector must be present in the environment at the same time for there to be a risk of epidemics. Although the risk is low for the time being, climate change is expected to have an impact on habitats and the consequences cannot yet be calculated.