[Rockhounds] The Siberian Tundra Is Doing That Exploding Thing Again

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

The Siberian tundra is still out here exploding. A new study
<https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/11/1/21> 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
<https://gizmodo.com/mysterious-hole-discovered-in-siberia-1605872539>,
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
<https://earther.gizmodo.com/everything-is-extremely-normal-and-totally-fine-1844909673>
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.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/methane-is-blowing-more-holes-in-the-arctic-1846242991