A 200-acre wide,nearly 300-foot deep pit in the Yana highlands of Siberia,known as the 'Batagaika Crater,' is expanding faster than expected due to climate change.
Sometimes called the 'Gateway to Hell,' the Batagaika Crater first formed when melting 'permafrost' soil within the Siberian tundra began to release tons of previously frozen methane,a powerful greenhouse gas,into Earth's atmosphere.
Now,new research has discovered that the rate of methane and other carbon gases released as the crater deepens has reached between 4000 and 5000 tons per year.
The findings,according to the study's lead author,'demonstrate how quickly permafrost degradation occurs.'
He warns the crater is soon likely to leak all the remaining greenhouse gas it has left.
Above,1999 (left) and 2016 (right) NASA satellite images of the Batagaika Crater's expansion
The team was able to develop a 3D model of how the icy permafrost has given way during its decades-long collapse using wide-ranging data from a variety of independent sources.
High resolution remote sensing — collected both from satellite data and via drone flights over the Batagaika — was combined with permafrost samples and other soil samples on field expeditions in 2019 and 2023.
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That data was all fed into their computer models.
This model helped them to map and predict the melting of the underlying geological structure of the permafrost to figure out how much and what materials are thawing inside it and then what's released,whether into the water table or the atmosphere.
The results revealed,as Kizyakov told Popular Science,'how dynamically the landforms in permafrost areas change.'
Nikita Tananaev,a researcher at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk,who was not a contributor to the new research,noted that just this leakage from the crater is altering the nearby ecosystems permanently.
'This will lead to significant alterations to the riverine habitat,and the effect of sediment escaping the slump [the Batagaika crater] is even seen in the Yana River,the major river in the vicinity,' Tananaev said.
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