Polar Regions

"However, our analysis of the datasets shows that the decline in surface albedo in the polar regions only accounts for roughly 15 percent of the most recent decline in planetary albedo," Helge Goessling explains.

Since the 1500s, only two bird species in the Western Palaearctic, a vast area spanning North Africa to polar regions, were considered to have gone extinct.

This is just part of an area referred to by some as the Third Pole; a place which has more ice than any other part of the world outside the polar regions.

The team say the Moon is an appealing location for a backup bio-vault due to its natural features, including deep craters near polar regions which never see sunlight and frigid conditions that readily reach the -196 degrees Celsius needed for long-term biological sample preservation.

In a study earlier this year, computer modelling found that stratospheric aerosol injection could cause strong warming 15km above the tropics which would change large-scale weather patterns, warming the polar regions and altering rainfall patterns over land.