New Delhi

Climate Change is a word tossed around too lightly compared to magnitude of effect it is going to have on us. Climate Change doesn't just refer to few degrees of change in global temperature, or melting glaciers. The effects of climate change are manifold.

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Researchers have now said that melting of ice in the northern hemisphere has a potential to release thousands of tonnes of unknown bacteria as glaciers and ice cover melt.

"We think of glaciers as a huge store of frozen water but the key lesson from this research is that they are also ecosystems in their own right," microbiologist and study author Arwyn Edwards of Aberystwyth University in the UK told the BBC.

As ice sheets melt with temperature increasing, the bacteria frozen in the ice can potentially reach warmer waters where they can possibly multiply. Many of these bacterias can be previously unknown and may severely impact us. 

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The study was led by glacial hydrologist Ian Stevens of Aarhus University in Denmark. The research team collected and studied surface meltwater from ten glaciers across the Northern Hemisphere. These glaciers were located in Canadian Arctic, European Alps, Greenland and Svalbard.

The researchers found an average of tens of thousands of microbes in each milliliter of water. The researchers claim that more than hundred thousand tonnes of bacteria could be released in next 80 years.

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