Heating climate could increase risk of Arctic ‘virus spillover’

A warming climate could bring viruses in the Arctic into contact with new environments and hosts, increasing the risk of “viral spillover”, according to newly published research.

Viruses need hosts like humans, animals, plants or fungi to replicate and spread, and occasionally they can jump to a new one that lacks immunity, as seen with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scientists in Canada wanted to investigate how climate change might affect spillover risk by examining samples from the arctic landscape of Lake Hazen.

It is the largest lake in the world entirely north of the Arctic Circle, and “was truly unlike any other place I’ve been”, researcher Graham Colby, now a medical student at the University of Toronto, told the AFP news agency.

The team sampled soil that becomes a riverbed for melted glacier water in the northern summer, as well as the lakebed itself, which required clearing snow and drilling through two metres of ice, even in May — springtime in Canada — when the research was carried out.

They used ropes and a snowmobile to lift the lake sediment through almost 300 metres (980 feet) of water, and samples were then sequenced for DNA and RNA, the genetic blueprints and messengers of life.