The Doomsday Vault’s home is already altered by climate change. A report says it could get worse.
Few places have served as a locus for the public’s anxiety about climate change as much as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The seed ark, popularly known as the “Doomsday Vault,” is embedded deep in the permafrost of a northerly Norwegian island and stores nearly a million samples from around the world for safekeeping in the event of war, famine, disease and, yes, climate change. It backs up gene banks around the globe, a fail safe for the fail safes.