Melting permafrost could also release millions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane each year.
One report states that permafrost thawing caused by climate change may eventually release trapped microbes and even radioactive material dating from the Cold War.
The researchers found that, by analyzing historical records and previous contamination studies, microbes that have been locked in permafrost for millennia may end up waking up to climate change, they point from livescience.
And is that the climate change it melts Arctic ice and microbes thaw, releasing bacteria resistant to current antibiotics or even introducing viruses that humans have never encountered before.
Permafrost covers approximately 23 million square kilometers of the Northern Hemisphere and its thickness varies from less than 1 m to more than 1,000 m, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
And is that most of the permafrost layer in the Arctic has persisted for 800,000 to 1 million years but climate change could change absolutely everything.
And is that warming in the Arctic is progressing twice as fast as in other parts of the world and in the last 15 years the region has melted to the point where the frozen landscape has transformed into something that had never been seen. .
And it is that in addition to the risk of new viruses or radioactive waste being released, the melting of permafrost can end up releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane each year, an amount that could increase considerably as our planet continues to warm.
Of particular concern is radioactive waste because since nuclear testing began in the 1950s, radioactive materials have been dumped into the Arctic.
Specifically during the Cold War, from the end of World War II to 1991, both the United States and the Soviet Union conducted nuclear research tests in the Arctic that have left high levels of radioactive waste on the ground and in permafrost.