from
TheGuardian
Website was built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters.
Photograph: John Mcconnico/AP but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change.
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 melt-water gushing into the entrance tunnel.
When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide "failsafe" protection against,
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.
The Svalbard seed vault: safeguarding the world's crop varieties
Fortunately, the
melt-water 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.
inside the international Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitsbergen, Norway.
Photograph: Jens Buttner/dpa/Alamy
The end of 2016 saw average temperatures over 7°C above normal on Spitsbergen, pushing the permafrost above melting point.
The Svalbard archipelago, of which Spitsbergen is part, has warmed rapidly in recent decades, according to Ketil Isaksen, from Norway's Meteorological Institute.
The vault managers are now taking precautions, including major work to waterproof the 100m-long tunnel into the mountain and digging trenches into the mountainside to channel melt-water and rain away.
They have also removed electrical equipment from the tunnel that produced some heat and installed pumps in the vault itself in case of a future flood.
Hege Njaa Aschim said there was no option but to find solutions to ensure the enduring safety of the vault:
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