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Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts

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Fri, 2017-05-19 15:29 — Maeryn Obley

The Svalbard ‘doomsday’ seed vault was built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters. Photograph: John Mcconnico/AP

Image:  The Svalbard ‘doomsday’ seed vault was built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters. Photograph: John Mcconnico/AP

theguardian.com - May 19th 2017 - Damian Carrington

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. 

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Fri, 2017-05-19 22:07 — Kathy Gilbeaux

popsci.com - by Mary Beth Griggs - May 19, 2017

A failure at a fail-safe vault. The irony is delicious, but that’s not the whole story . . . 

. . . a 100 meter long tunnel leads into the heart of the mountain where the seed vault is stored, running at a slight downward slope. At the base of the slope are two pumping stations to remove any water that might get in. Then there's a slight uphill section before you reach the doors to the vault itself, where the seeds are kept at 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit or -18 Celsius . . . 

. . . “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."

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Sun, 2017-05-21 18:02 — Kathy Gilbeaux

ADDITIONAL SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION IS WITHIN THE LINK BELOW . . .

Melting Arctic Ice Jeopardizes Humanity's Plant Backup Plan
http://www.10news.com/newsy/melting-arctic-ice-jeopardizes-humanitys-plant-backup-plan

 

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