This article was taken from the February 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This 70-metre-deep crater suddenly appeared last summer on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. In November, explorers descended inside to try to understand its origins. Marina Leibman, chief scientist at the Earth Cryosphere Institute of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that the crater was produced by a build-up of gases in the permafrost that eventually pushed their way out. "There is gas enclosed in permafrost, locked inside," says Leibman. "So I think it was somehow released by warming."
Dmitry Streletskiy, an executive committee member for the Global Terrestrial Network of Permafrost, suspects that craters like this formed during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, a warm period 7,000 years ago. "It's likely we will see more of these," he says.
Leibman blames this destabilisation on local warming, rather than climate change. "For scientists, it is more important to look at something local, specifically the warm summer of 2012," she says. "Global warming is for the politicians."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
