Video: Underground methane bubbles and trembling tundra in Siberia’s land of mysterious craters

Desdemona Despair

20 July 2016 (Siberian Times) – Earth is moving as ‘leaking methane gas due to global warming causes surface to bubble’ in a new phenomenon.

This extraordinary sight – in a video filmed of the tundra on remote Belyy Island in the Kara Sea off the Yamal Peninsula coastline – was witnessed by a scientific research expedition. Researchers Alexander Sokolov and Dorothee Ehrich spotted 15 patches of trembling or bubbling grass-covered ground.

When punctured they emitted methane and carbon dioxide, according to measurements, although so far no details have been given. The reason is as yet unclear, but one possible explanation of the phenomenon is abnormal heat that caused permafrost to thaw, releasing gases.

Alexander Sokolov said that this summer is unusually hot on the Arctic island, a sign of which is polar bears moving from the frozen sea to the island.

Scientists have warned at the potential catastrophic impact of global warming leading to the release into the atmosphere of harmful gases hitherto frozen in the ground or under the sea. A possibility is that the trembling tundra on Bely Island is this process in action.

Further south, on the Yamal and Taimyr peninsulas, scientists are actively observing a number of craters that have suddenly formed in the permafrost.  […]

On Yamal, the main theory is that the craters were formed by pingos – dome-shaped mounds over a core of ice – erupting under pressure of methane gas released by the thawing of permafrost caused by climate change.

The Yamal craters, some tiny but others large, were created by natural gas filling vacant space in ice humps, eventually triggering eruptions, according to leading authority Professor Vasily Bogoyavlensky, of Moscow’s Oil and Gas Research Institute. 

Recently there were accounts of a ‘big bang’ leading to the formation of a crater on the Taimyr Peninsula. 

The noise could be heard up to 100 kilometres away and one resident. They saw a ‘glow in the sky’ after the explosion. [more]

Trembling tundra – the latest weird phenomenon in Siberia’s land of craters