Scientists discover the ‘Gateway to Hell’ in Siberia is expanding rapidly – it can be seen from SPACE
A 200 hectare wide and almost 90 meter deep pit in Siberia’s Yana highlands known as the ‘Batagaika crater’ is expanding faster than expected due to climate change.
The Batagaika Crater, also known as the “Gateway to Hell,” first formed when the melting of “permafrost” soil in the Siberian tundra released tons of previously frozen methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into Earth’s atmosphere ended up.
Now new research has found that the amount of methane and other carbon gases released as the crater deepens is between 4,000 and 5,000 tons per year.
The findings, said the study’s lead author, “show how quickly permafrost degradation is occurring.”
He warns that the crater will soon leak any remaining greenhouse gas.
A 200-acre-wide, nearly 300-foot-deep pit in Siberia’s Yana highlands known as the ‘Batagaika crater’ (above) is expanding faster than expected due to climate change
New research has found that the rate of methane and other carbon gases released as the crater (above) deepens is estimated at 4,000 to 5,000 tons per year
Glaciologist Alexander Kizyakov, the study’s lead author, worked with a dozen other researchers on the new study, which was published this month in the journal Geomorphology.
Kizyakov and his colleagues found that the crater has almost reached the bottom, meaning that the melting permafrost that continues to melt, causing further collapse, has almost completely melted.
But Kizyakov, who teaches at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, noted that there are still opportunities to continue the melt sideways.
“Expansion along the margins and upward trend is expected,” Kizyakov said Atlas Obscura.
‘This lateral expansion is also limited by the proximity of bedrock, the top of which apparently rises to the saddle between the nearest mountains at about 550 meters altitude. [1805 feet] uphill,” he explained.
Above, 1999 (left) and 2016 (right) NASA satellite images of the Batagaika crater expansion
The team was able to develop a 3D model of how the icy permafrost gave way during its decades-long collapse, using a variety of data from several independent sources.
High-resolution remote sensing – collected from both satellite data and via drone flights over the Batagaika – was combined with permafrost samples and other soil samples during field expeditions in 2019 and 2023.
That data was all entered into their computer models.
This model helped them map and predict the melting of the underlying geological structure of the permafrost, to find out how much and which materials within it thaw and then what is released, either into the water table or into the atmosphere.
The results revealed, like Kizyakov told Popular science‘how dynamically the landforms in permafrost areas change.’
Nikita Tananaev, a researcher at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk, who did not contribute to the new study, noted that it is precisely this leakage from the crater that permanently changes nearby ecosystems.
‘This will lead to significant changes in river habitat and the effect of sediment escaping the swale [the Batagaika crater] is even seen in the Jana River, the main river in the area,” Tananaev said.
