What Are Megaslumps and How Do They Threaten Our Planet's Future?

Massive slumps form like apox on the surface of the Earth, and climate change could be the reason why. Also known as a mega slump, this landscape "eats" the surrounding landscape like a living thing.

What Is a Megaslump?

Megaslumps are deep craters on the Earth's surface that appear like eerie sinkholes. Because of their unusual geographical features, these growing depressions are also known as "gateway to the underworld" and "tadpole-shaped gash."

The word "megaslump" is not widely used by geologists and does not have any strict scientific definition. This term is derived from the well-known word "slump" which refers to a loosely consolidated mass of rock or material that has stumbled down a cliff, a hillside or a shoreline.

This vast expanding depression is typically the result of land that has been disturbed by earthquake shocks, permafrost melting, or undercutting from a river. When the falling landslides take place in the Arctic region due to the thawing of ice-rich portions of the land, they are called retrogressive thaw slumps.

Recently, new permafrost thaw slumps rapidly emerged due to climate change. In the study "Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment," it was reported that thousands of landslide slumps in a High Arctic environment were triggered by climate over recent decades. The researchers also reveal that there was a 60-fold increase in the number of mega slumps between 1984 and 2015 following four unusually warm summers.

The largest of the megaslumps is the Batagaika crater found in Siberia. It was first spotted on satellite images in 1991 after a portion of the hillside collapsed in northern Sakha in Russia. It appears like a wound on the surface of the Earth due to a cataclysmic event in the past, but it actually emerged only a few decades ago because of warming temperatures.

Megaslumps as Ominous Sign

The formation of mega slumps is due to the melting of permafrost, or the frozen soil and rock that makes up the bulk of the Arctic landscape. The soil beneath the slump contains a huge amount of organic carbon, which can be released into the atmosphere due to thawing permafrost, which worsens the warming of the Earth.

This phenomenon not only disfigures the terrain, but it also releases harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that had otherwise been trapped by the grip of the frozen ground.carbon is mostly in the form of frozen remains of plants and other organic material, along with methane which has been trapped inside ice crystals.

As the Earth continues to warm, the permafrost thaws, and our planet loosens and slumps.

According to Professor Julian Murton from the University of Sussex, it can be expected that there will be more slumps and more erosion of the land surface as the climate warms.

Megaslumps are expected to expand at a higher rate with an increasing air temperature. This can lead to more and more climate warming in the coming years.

The release of greenhouse gases, especially methane, from melting permafrost is known as a climate feedback loop. As the Earth continues to warm, more permafrost melts, and more greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere.

This results in more warming and even more thawing. Once the process of the climate feedback loop is triggered, it becomes very difficult to stop.