Newly released drone footage provides a bird's-eye view of the Batagay (also called Batagayka or Batagaika) crater in Siberia. Ruptly.tv reported that this frozen crater is known as the "gateway to the underworld" by locals, and is considered the world's largest permafrost depression.
Worlds Largest Permafrost Crater
According to CGTN's report, the video shows two explorers navigating uneven terrain at the depression's base, formed due to deforestation in the 1960s and subsequent melting of the permafrost, causing the land to sink. Residents refer to it as "the cave-in," as it initially appeared as a ravine in the 1970s but expanded due to thawing during sunny days.
Experts warn that Russia is warming 2.5 times faster than the global average, leading to the melting of tundra that covers 65% of the country and releasing stored greenhouse gases from the thawed soil.
This thawing permafrost poses serious risks, as it threatens cities and towns, causing road buckling, house damage, and pipeline disruptions, exacerbated by intense wildfires in the region.
Nikita Tananayev, the lead researcher at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute, emphasizes that the expanding slump in Batagaika is a warning sign of greater danger to come, predicting more mega-slumps forming with rising temperatures and human activities until all permafrost is gone.
Satellite Imagery Confirms Increasing Permafrost Crater
The vast crater in Siberia's eastern part is covering around 0.3 square miles (0.8 square kilometers), which is an area equivalent to about 145 football fields that are likely formed due to deforestation during the 1940s. As per Live Science, this deforestation led to erosion, which further worsened the seasonal permafrost melting, resulting in the formation of a massive crater known as the "megaslump."
Since about 80% of the permafrost in this region comprises ice, significant melting caused sediment on the hillside to collapse, creating the appearance of a large gash cutting through Russia's Sakha Republic landscape.
Both drone and satellite imagery confirm the continuous expansion of the crater. As the land has receded, it has exposed "frozen remains dating back tens of thousands of years," tracing back to the Middle Pleistocene era, which concluded approximately 126,000 years ago.
While scientists are uncertain about the exact rate of the crater's expansion, locals claim that over recent years, it has grown between 66 to 98 feet (20 to 30 meters) at specific locations, as reported by NDTV.
Alexey Lupachev, a senior researcher at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science at the Russian Academy of Sciences, described to Ruptly.tv the crater as an extraordinary and rare natural phenomenon that preserves the history of Earth over half a million years within the permafrost.
According to IFL Science, rising temperatures in Russia have generated extraordinary geological activity. For example, a large sinkhole of more than 20 meters in diameter and more than 30 meters in depth appeared in northwest Siberia in the summer of 2020. An explosive methane gas bubble exploded beneath the earth in the isolated tundra, forming the crater.
Fortunately, these sinkholes and megaslumps in Siberia have only been discovered in isolated and desolate areas. If they occur in inhabited regions, however, they might pose a severe hazard to both people and infrastructure.
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