At the time I speculated whether this was a fluke or whether we'd be seeing more of these things in the high north before long. We didn't have to wait long for the answer.
The Siberian Times reports that reindeer herders have come across two more of these craters.
No word yet on whether anything similar is happening in the Canadian north.
MoS, the Disaffected Lib
UPDATE: Here's an update from Scientific American
A NEW UPDATE: Large spikes of methane being released into the atmosphere above Siberia may be tied to the mysterious craters which have appeared in the landscape, according to a US scientist.
Dr Jason Box, a professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, has highlighted increased levels of methane above the landscape.
The geologist's blog links the craters to climate change, as the melting Siberian permafrost is allowing the greenhouse gas to escape and create the enormous holes.
Using data from a ground-based climate observing station in Tiksi, a small town in the Sakha Republic on the Arctic Ocean coast, Dr Box discovered "high end" levels of methane. The readings were backed up by data from similar stations in Alaska and Canada, according to News.com.au.
The spikes, which Dr Box calls "dragon breaths", may well be connected to the unusual holes that have appeared in the Siberia landscape over the last month.
Three craters have been discovered so far. The first 80m-wide hole was spotted 1,800 miles east of Moscow in a barren permafrost stretch of the Yamal Peninsula, an area that translates as "the end of the world".
.. at the risk of being impertinent.. we have no shortage of methane generating blowholes currently in Ottawalberta.. On the grim side, you wrote of phenomena like this, way back. Peat fires as the permafrost thawed.. Mother Earth is alive, powerful, evolving.. which may come as news to the flat earth Harper ProRogues and rapture trash
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me most, Sal, is the uncertainty as to whether we have already passed one or more tipping points that lead to runaway global warming. There are so many symptoms of that emerging in the far north, these methane craters being the most recent. As you point out there are also the wild fires in the boreal forest, the fires spreading through the drying tundra exposing the underlying permafrost. We have the loss of Arctic sea ice and the albedo effect causing the warming of northern sea water and the melting of seabed methane clathrates. Add to that the black soot problem from the wild fires that is hastening the melting of the Greenland ice sheet which, when it's gone, will have caused some 23' of global sea level rise.
ReplyDeleteThe eerie part is each of these problems is compounded - worsened,hastened - by every one of the rest. Have these now, collectively, constituted the runaway feedback mechanisms we were warned about long ago? What bothers me is that I can't say "no" with any confidence.
Here's an update from Scientific American
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cause-of-mysterious-siberian-holes-possibly-found/?&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20140731
Here's another update:
ReplyDeleteLarge spikes of methane being released into the atmosphere above Siberia may be tied to the mysterious craters which have appeared in the landscape, according to a US scientist.
Dr Jason Box, a professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, has highlighted increased levels of methane above the landscape.
The geologist's blog links the craters to climate change, as the melting Siberian permafrost is allowing the greenhouse gas to escape and create the enormous holes.
Using data from a ground-based climate observing station in Tiksi, a small town in the Sakha Republic on the Arctic Ocean coast, Dr Box discovered "high end" levels of methane. The readings were backed up by data from similar stations in Alaska and Canada, according to News.com.au.
The spikes, which Dr Box calls "dragon breaths", may well be connected to the unusual holes that have appeared in the Siberia landscape over the last month.
Three craters have been discovered so far. The first 80m-wide hole was spotted 1,800 miles east of Moscow in a barren permafrost stretch of the Yamal Peninsula, an area that translates as "the end of the world".
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/siberian-mystery-craters-explained-dragon-breath-methane-spikes-above-russia-linked-climate-1458971
I was remiss in not including this rather stark warning from renowned glaciologist, Dr. Box:
ReplyDelete"If we don't get atmospheric carbon down and cool the Arctic, the climate physics and recent observations tell me we will probably trigger the release of these vast carbon stores, dooming our kids to a hothouse Earth," Dr Box wrote.