Glaciers Will Tell the Story of COVID-19 for Centuries to Come



© The Washington Post - Getty Images Scientists from the Ohio State University say that Earth’s crust will carry evidence of COVID-19 (coronavirus) likely for the rest of Earth’s long timeline.

Climate researchers who study historical climate events say there are links to today.
Scientists study history by pulling enormous cores of ice out of deep holes.
The ice "records" events like drought and disease, but must be studied with historical records.

Scientists from the Ohio State University say that Earth’s crust will carry evidence of COVID-19 (coronavirus) likely for the rest of Earth’s long timeline. That’s because of both environmental signs of a global pandemic and the way pathogens like viruses and bacteria are effectively “flash frozen” in snow and ice.


The scientists, from OSU’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, have tested ice cores in some of the world's most remote areas for viruses. These cores are most useful as a way to corroborate the human historical record.

“[If] all you have are the ice core records, and you don’t have the human history, you might miss the connection,” said Byrd Center geography researcher Ellen Mosley-Thompson in a statement. One example is of a high amount of dust in cores dating back to the 1300s, which scientists can’t place or contextualize without some written record, such as contemporary notes about a drought or even a volcanic eruption.

The same is true in reverse: It’s impractical for scientists to search entire ice cores for evidence of a viral pathogen at some point in the past. Instead of that needle in a haystack, they need bookends on a smaller time frame, and that guidance comes from the historical record. “[I]f you are looking for evidence of old viruses, then you have to know precisely where to look in the cores,” Mosley-Thompson said in the OSU statement.

In the case of the dusty core from the 1300s, the cause was a “major drought” that lasted for more than four decades. Combined with that, the human population was impacted and reduced by the plague. And, the statement says, “On some glaciers the ice that formed during the years of the Plague contains less lead than ice that formed during preceding years, likely because mining and smelting activities sharply dropped off during that time.”

Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms)

The multifaceted impact of a global pandemic had similar hallmarks even in the 1300s. The human cost of illness affected everything, from culture to industry to Earth itself. And a drought and illness event that lasted for decades was enough to pull down some of the world’s great contemporary civilizations, including “the Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia, societies around the Indus River and the Yangtze River in Asia, and the Old Kingdom in Egypt,” the statement says.

COVID-19 is already affecting Earth's atmosphere, the scientists say. From the statement:
As people stayed home and drove less, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide levels dropped over China and throughout much of the United States. Both are potent pollutants that primarily form by burning gas and oil – the fossil fuels that power most of our vehicles. That decrease in nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide levels will be evident in the nitrate and sulfate levels in ice cores retrieved by future glaciologists.

So the scientists believe there are parallels between events like the ones in the 1300s and the global pandemic happening today. One interesting difference, of course, is that the world is now totally interconnected. In the 1300s, entire civilizations could thrive and perish without ever meaningfully contacting each other. Today, any group that suffers affects everyone—and can ask everyone for help.

“I suspect there are some lessons here that would be useful today,” Mosley-Thompson concluded. Indeed, humankind has faced pandemics and catastrophes for all of history. What we can change is how we respond.