The Siberian Tundra Is Doing That Exploding Thing Again
The Siberian tundra is still out here exploding. A new study from the Woodwell Climate Research Center has identified three new craters in the region’s increasingly volatile permafrost, and the climate crisis is to blame.
Researchers have been seeing giant holes form in western Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula for years. The first, discovered by workers back in 2014, measured 262 feet (80 meters) in diameter.
Since then, scientists have found another six craters on Yamal and the nearby Gydan peninsula, most recently discovering a crater as deep as half a football field last year. While researchers have suspected explosive methane gas has welled up into the tundra as it thaws and caused the explosions, it’s been an area of active research.
“These craters represent an Earth system process that was previously unknown to scientists,” Sue Natali, Arctic program director at Woodwell Climate Research Center and co-author on the study, said in an emailed statement.
To learn more about how these holes form, the researchers used satellite data from Siberia’s Yamal and Gydan peninsulas—a combined area of 126,255 square miles (327,000 square kilometers)—to create an artificial intelligence-based model of the region with Google Earth Engine’s cloud computing platform. The model located all seven of the previously-discovered craters, and also indicated that three more of them have formed.
The researchers found that the craters begin forming deep underground, in pockets of thawed earth known as taliks. These taliks frequently form beneath Arctic lakes when the water within them warms. Methane can build in these pockets. As pressure grows, it can lead to explosive results.
More at earther.gizmodo.com
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Joseph Olson
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For the first billion years of existence, Earth’s atmosphere was primarily Ammonia and Methane. This Methane did NOT come from dead dinosaurs. Fossil Fuel is an intentional misnomer.
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Charles Higley
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Do not ignore the abiotic source of methane from Earth’s core. It is everywhere that you drill deep enough. And , why would this melt below and not from the top down. This suggests a heat source from below, not above.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Charles,
Do not ignore the NATURAL anaerobic production of methane from the digestion of organic matter (the tundra) by anaerobic bacteria..
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Dharna,
There can be no better observation than what can be ‘seen’ in the photo taken Aug 25.
I am old and my eyesight clearly is not good. So to read the text on my computer screen I sometimes need to use a magnifying glass.
My initial reaction as I read the text, was that the hole could have been formed by the soil sinking into a void from which methane gas had slowly leaked. For I had not yet focused upon the jagged rim of the hole which I expected should be seen if there was an explosion which ejected the matter of the hole upward. So I tried to see evidence of the volume (depth) of the ejected matter. Then, I saw there were people standing on any matter ejected from the hole and it appeared that the matter of the jagged edge was not very ‘thick’. But certainly these people could tell us how much matter appeared to be ejected out of the hole.
So I have a different explanation about the formation of these holes because of what I see, which cannot be questioned. I see two surface with drastically different slopes. Of which one is vertical. I see two different ‘shades’ of matter on the sloped portion of the hole. The ligther portion of which I consider the still frozen permafrost. Which is can see is not an uniform depth beneath the surface. And I have to assume that thicker permafrost is supporting the tundra surface layer falling into a voids which has formed, for whatever reason, beneath it.
And from living in northern Minnesota for about 3 decades I know the Arctic tundra must have been formed from moss growing from nutrients from the atmosphere because any mineral soil is 8ft beneath the top surface of the moss. Etc., etc. about what has been well observed and studied in Minnesota.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Tom O
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I don’t know, I look at these things and say stupid things like “Is there any evidence that these things happened during any of the other warm periods in history? Would there not be evidence of one of these happening during the medieval warm period, as an example? If not, why would it only be happening during a period of warming now, during the satellite era, that isn’t even as warm?” It should make you wonder. After all, look at how perfectly round and melted they look in all the photos of them, and how they look like they are covered with a frozen liquid that came up from deep inside. Hard to believe that a half a degree of “warming air” could cause that kind of explosive melt deep within, sort of like the way a microwave will cause something inside what you’re cooking to explode.
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Paul Jury
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In reply to your supposition of microwaves, I’d support that having read many years ago of a ruse being perpetrated by Russia and the US on the planet to melt the permafrost using HARRP type tech. The reason being was to melt vast areas to open it up for, unsurprisingly, exploitation of the resources under it.
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Carbon Bigfoot
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Did it suck Mikey Mann’s tree down one these holes. There goes his Yamal evidence..
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