Doomsday Seed Vault or The Global Seed Vault, which was designed to preserve the agriculture seeds in case of a doomsday scenario, has been breached by the melting water from the Arctic permafrost. The vault currently has one million sample of seeds and is the world's biggest collection of agriculture seeds that represents 13,000 years of agricultural history. It is situated on the island of Spitsbergen, in Norway's Svalbard.
Established nearly a decade ago, the vault was recently expanded adding fifty thousand seeds sample donated across the globe. It was intended to withstand global catastrophe – but, unusually warm winter temperatures this year sent unexpected amounts of meltwater pouring into the entrance tunnel, a report on Guardian stated.
However, Mail Online reported that the flooding hasn't harmed the seeds but experts are worried about the breach and how climate change will affect's the vault's long-term survival. "The vault provides a last resort back-up to a network of seed banks around the world, which store seeds but can be threatened by war, accidents and natural disasters. Permafrost and thick rock ensure seed samples remain frozen even without power," the report added.
Experts are monitoring the vault round the clock to analyse the adversary of the climate change—to find out whether the soaring temperature will bring in any unforeseen scenario. There are also reports that scientist is planning to make the massive tunnel waterproof and even create trenches to release excess water.
"It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that," Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault, told The Guardian. "A lot of water went into the start of the tunnel and then it froze to ice, so it was like a glacier when you went in," he added. Just like agriculture seeds, scientists recently opened a second vault to save the world's book collections, which will be stored in digital format.
The vault is also called as the World Arctic Archive.
