The Siberian Tundra Is Doing That Exploding Thing Againhttps://earther.gizmodo.com/methane-is-blowing-more-holes-in-the-arctic-1846242991The 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.
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.
In addition to uncovering the three new holes, the model showed previously unseen stark changes across the two peninsulas. It found that between 1984 and 2017, about 5% of the examined area has seen observable ecosystem changes, including “shifts in vegetation, elevation, and water extent.” Entire lakes have disappeared, draining out completely as the permafrost—frozen ground made of soil, rocks, and water—that forms their outer edges and bottoms melted away amid rising temperatures. Huge swaths of the region have also become greener because higher air and soil temperatures have increased plant growth. Due to permafrost thaw and ice melt, parts of the region are also sinking.
Permafrost thaw itself is dangerous. It’s left coasts more vulnerable to dangerous erosion, and it threatens to unleash the planet-warming methane currently stored safely beneath the ground into the atmosphere. The craters are the most dramatic example of that, but they’re hardly the only way methane and carbon dioxide escape from the tundra. Scientists have found that the Arctic is emitting more carbon from formerly frozen soils than it takes up, creating a dangerous situation for the climate.
Detecting and Mapping Gas Emission Craters on the Yamal and Gydan Peninsulas, Western Siberiahttps://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/11/1/21/htmhttps://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences11010021
