Climate change could unveil more pandemic viruses

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Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-10-19 10:01

International

A lone researcher looking at the mountains on the northern shore of Lake Hazen. Credit information: Graham Colby

Climate change could make the High Arctic a breeding ground for emerging pandemics, according to international researchers. The team sequenced genetic material to model virus and host populations in Lake Hazen, the largest High Arctic freshwater lake. They found that as glacier melt increased (as it does with climate change), so too would the risk of virus spillover (the transmission of viruses from animals to humans). As climate change also forces some species to migrate further north, this could increase opportunities for virus infections to infect animals and then be passed onto humans, the researchers say.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Viral spillover risk increases with climate change in High Arctic lake sediments
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

As both climate change and pandemics are reshaping the world we live in, understanding how these two processes interact has become critical. For this, we focused on a High Arctic lake, where global warming is amplified, and sequenced all the genetic material present in this environment. Resorting to a comparative analysis, we show that the risk of viral spillover increases with runoff from glacier melt -- a proxy for the effect of climate change. Should climate change also shift species range of potential viral vectors and reservoirs northwards, the High Arctic could become fertile ground for emerging pandemics.