Global warming has been associated with several devastating effects on our planet and one such that has had a pulsating impact worldwide is the melting glaciers. Glaciers worldwide are melting so fast that scientists are struggling to keep track as global warming accelerates. Apart from the release of vast quantities of water as they thaw, research has shown that water is not the only thing melting glaciers can leave behind.

In western Iceland, against a rocky mountainside is a phrase engraved into a plaque reading, “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.” This plaque honors Okjokull, a now-melted glacier deemed in 2014, the first in the country to be lost to climate change.

From Norway to the Canadian Yukon to China, scientists over the years have discovered abundant stores of the greenhouse gas methane in glacial melt, signaling a ticking climate bomb.

Gabrielle Kleber, a scientist who studies glaciers at the University of Cambridge says, it is a stark image to comprehend the effects of climate change, melting glaciers and then releasing methane.

According to a study by the University of South California, mercury from thawing permafrost (frozen soil), could threaten Alaska native peoples by leaching into fish they eat, which can cause permanent lung or brain damage. Research shows that permafrost is releasing methane as it thaws, adding a potent greenhouse gas to an already fragile Arctic environment. Moreover, Heavy metals like mercury and arsenic are also emerging from this melting soil.

 To make it worse, emerging from the melting Arctic ice are viruses. In 2014, scientists were able to revive a dormant virus sample pulled from 30,000-year-old Siberian permafrost, a process that has been repeated severally with many different pathogens.

Despite little concern by scientists that these ice-trapped organisms will fuel a large-scale pandemic, an anthrax outbreak in 2016 in Russia was believed to be caused by a dead reindeer unearthed by melting permafrost.

Besides, in recent years, some glacial tourists and hikers have stumbled upon ancient artifacts that were once held within the ice, from an Iron Age Sandal to a Viking Sword. However, others have made far more unsettling discoveries of preserved corpses on melting glacial paths.