Local Siberian media has reported that the very ground that people stand on is moving under their feet in the arctic regions of Siberia. Scientists have discovered 7000 gas filled bubbles according to the Siberian Times. These, bulges or 'bulgunyakh' in the local Yakut language, were originally discovered last year by researchers in Siberia's remote Bely Island. At that time only 15 of these bubbles had been identified, but a survey in the wider region of the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas has revealed the massive number of 7000 which some scientists fear may explode at any time.
There is startling photo evidence in the Siberian Times article that is worth your time to see.
From the article:
The region has seen several recent examples of sudden 'craters' or funnels forming from pingos after what scientists believe are caused by eruptions from methane gas released by the thawing of permafrost which is triggered by climate change.
'We need to know which bumps are dangerous and which are not,' said Titovsky. 'Scientists are working on detecting and structuring signs of potential threat, like the maximum height of a bump and pressure that the earth can withstand.'
snip
Our pictures and video of this remarkable gas release are seen here, although this phenomenon appears different to the exploding pingo events. These bubbles - such as one seen in our video on Bely Island - have been called 'trembling tundra'.
'Their appearance at such high latitudes is most likely linked to thawing permafrost which in is in turn linked to overall rise of temperature on the north of Eurasia during last several decades,' said a spokesman.
x xYouTube VideoScience Alert has a chronology of these crater mysteries at their website.
Back in 2016, local environmental researchers Alexander Sokolov and Dorothee Ehrich decided to pull back the dirt and grass that had been blanketing these bulging bumps of earth, and found that the air escaping from them contained up to 1,000 times more methane than the surrounding air, and 25 times more carbon dioxide.
And things can get even weirder at the bottom of the biggest sinkholes - a 2014 investigation into a 30-metre-wide (98-foot) crater on the Yamal Peninsula found that air near the bottom of the crater contained unusually high concentrations of methane - up to 9.6 percent.
As Katia Moskvitch reported for Nature at the time, archaeologist Andrei Plekhanov from the Scientific Centre of Arctic Studies in Salekhard, Russia, told her that the surrounding air usually contains just 0.000179 percent methane.
Researchers have hypothesised that these methane bubbles are linked to a recent heatwave that had prompted the Siberian tundra's permafrost to thaw.