Siberia is a vast area in Russia. It starts from Ural Mountains in the west and ends at Cape dezhnioff in the east. If it is picked up alone, its area will still rank second in the world (area of about 13.22 million square kilometers), far exceeding Canada's 9.98 million square kilometers.
In the remote area of northwestern Siberia, there is an Yamal Peninsula called the "end of the world". The Yamal Peninsula is located in Arctic Circle . Due to the cold climate, it has always been sparsely populated and the surface is mainly composed of permafrost. From the perspective of geology , the Yamal Peninsula is a very young place, which may have been formed 10,000 years ago, which is very rare on Earth.
In 2014, a mysterious sinkhole suddenly appeared on the Yamal Peninsula. This sinkhole has a diameter of 60 meters and an area of about 2836 square meters. It is only 30 kilometers away from the largest natural gas field in the local area.
After the locals discovered this sinkhole, they immediately reported to the relevant departments. A few days later, Dr. Evgeny Chuweilin, a geologist at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, led a team to the site for an investigation, but due to the fragile geology, the inspectors were unable to get close to them, so they could only explore through cameras. The expedition team found that there was a deep ice lake at the bottom of the sinkhole.
The inspection team could not give a scientific explanation for the causes of this sinkhole and the causes of the ice lake at the bottom in a short period of time.
In the following years, 16 mysterious sinkholes appeared in the local area one after another, and some people have seen the scene of the sinkholes forming with their own eyes - a violent explosion.
When the explosion occurs, the scene looks very spectacular. The violent explosion threw the underground soil, ice and most of the unfrozen matter 300 meters away. Due to the large force, the diameter of the thrown soil blocks even reaches 100 cm. At the same time, a "guardrail" will be formed around the sinkhole.
In June 2017, when a sinkhole on the bank of the Miudriaka River exploded, local people saw flames and smoke. The gas coming out of the ground continued to burn for about an hour and a half, and the flame reached four or five meters high.
After these pits are formed, most of them will "disappear" within a few days. Near Seyakha village, a sinkhole with a diameter of 70 meters and a depth of more than 50 meters was filled with water in just four days and turned into a small circular lake.
There are also some sinkholes that take longer to be flooded, but after a year or two, the edges of these sinkholes will be corroded, and then they will be filled with water, eventually becoming a small circular lake that is no different from other thousands of other lakes. After the 17 mysterious sinkholes appeared, the locals were most concerned about their specific causes and whether such things would happen again in the future.
However, it is not easy to accurately investigate their causes, and more people can only give their own explanations based on guessing. Some people say that UFOs flew out from the ground, and some people say that it was smashed by meteorite that fell from the sky, but these statements obviously have no basis.
Some climatologists say the emergence of these sinkholes may be related to a larger scale climate change in the Arctic. Current observations show that climate warming in the Arctic is as much as twice the global average, and the amount of permafrost in this region is also increasing in summer.
The permafrost layer in the Arctic Circle contains a large amount of carbon, about twice the current carbon content in the atmosphere. These carbons exist primarily in the form of frozen residues of plants and other organic matter. In addition, there is also methane trapped in ice crystals in the permafrost layer.
Due to the warming of the climate, the permafrost layer slowly thawed, and the underground microorganism begins to decompose organic matter and release methane and carbon dioxide . At the same time, methane trapped in the ice crystals will also be released. As a powerful greenhouse gas , these released methane will further accelerate the warming rate, resulting in more permanent soil melting.
Under some special geological conditions, such as in the relatively hard and closed areas on the surface, the methane underground is constantly released and cannot be discharged after rising to the surface, the pressure will become greater and higher and the temperature will become higher and higher. When it accumulates to a certain level, an explosion will occur, forming the so-called "sink pit".
If this statement is true, then the number of sinkholes on the Yamal Peninsula will never be frozen in only 17. As global climate warming intensifies, the permafrost layer in the Arctic Circle will melt more and more, and the methane and carbon dioxide will be released. After these gases enter the atmosphere, they will further aggravate global climate warming, resulting in a vicious cycle.
This makes scientists worried that the impact of global warming on human beings may become more and more profound, and the uncertainty of human beings' future is amplified. Where will humanity go in the end, it may plague scientists on Earth for a long time.
