Siberian holes - then there were two

Some more discussion which points to 'natural causes'.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cause-of-mysterious-siberian-holes-possibly-found/

Jul 31, 2014 |By Tanya Lewis and LiveScience
A Siberian hole that opened up mysteriously

A Siberian hole that opened up mysteriously and was reported in July 2014.
Credit: Screengrab Newslook Video

A trio of mysterious gaping holes in northern Siberia has spawned many theories about the craters' origin, but scientists have suggested some concrete explanations.

In mid-July, reindeer herders stumbled across a crater that was approximately 260 feet (80 meters) wide, on the Yamal Peninsula, whose name means "end of the world," The Siberian Times reported. Since then, two new chasms — a 50-foot (15 m) crater in the Taz district and a 200- to 330-foot (60 to 100 m) crater in the Taymyr Peninsula — have also been reported.

Neither aliens nor meteorites caused the strange cavities, as some had speculated, but the true explanation could be exciting nonetheless. Russian scientists have launched an investigation to find out more. [How Weird! The Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]

Helicopter video footage of the first hole shows it is surrounded by a mound of loose dirt that appears to have been thrown out of the hole.

"My personal opinion is it's some type of sinkhole," said Vladimir Romanovsky, a geophysicist who studies permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Sinkholes are pits in the ground formed when water fails to drain away.

The water likely came from melting permafrost or ice, said Romanovsky, who has spoken with the Russian scientists investigating the site. But whereas most sinkholes suck collapsed material inside, "this one actually erupted outside," he told Live Science. "It's not even in the [scientific] literature. It's pretty new what we're dealing with," he added.

Early on, polar scientist Chris Fogwill of the University of New South Wales, in Australia, suggested the first hole was created by the collapse of a pingo, a large, earth-covered mound of ice that usually forms in Arctic and subarctic regions.

Large holes have been showing up in Siberia, and scientists believe weather is the cause: http://t.co/4mExye7BR9 pic.twitter.com/bix07TBEka
— Sean Breslin (@Sean_Breslin) July 29, 2014





Kenji Yoshikawa, an environmental scientist also at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said he also thinks that a drained, collapsed pingo pond is the most likely explanation for the Yamal Peninsula pit. In Alaska, similar pingos exist in the Northern Seward Peninsula and near the city of Nuiqsut.

But Romanovsky said the hole doesn't look like a typical collapsed pingo; such features usually form from larger mounds that slowly cave in over a period of decades, with all the material falling inside.

From the photo of the Yamal crater, "it's obvious that some material was ejected from the hole," Romanovsky said. His Russian colleagues who visited the site told him the dirt was piled more than 3 feet (1 m) high around the hole's edges.

The crater's formation probably began in a similar way to that of a sinkhole, where water (in this case, melted ice or permafrost) collects in an underground cavity, Romanovsky said. But instead of the roof of the cavity collapsing, something different occurred. Pressure built up, possibly from natural gas (methane), eventually spewing out a slurry of dirt as the ground sunk away. Anna Kurchatova, a scientist at the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Center in Russia, made a similar observation to The Siberian Times.

The photo of the crater rim shows some vegetation that does not appear freshly grown, which suggests the hole may be several years old, Yoshikawa said. Romanovsky said it might be more recent, but investigators will need to look at archived high-resolution satellite images to pin down exactly when the crater appeared.

And many other questions remain: If a sinkhole erupted material, why is the hole's border so round and even? Would there be enough gas to fuel such an eruption, and where did such gas come from?

This part of Siberia contains deep gas fields, and it also contains a lot of small lakes, which formed between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago when the climate was warmer, Romanovsky said. Perhaps these odd holes developed in the same way that sinkholes did, but later expanded.

Domes of natural gas also exist in the United States, located east ofthe Sagavanirktok River in Alaska's North Slope Borough.

The development of permafrost sinkholes could be one indication of global warming, Romanovsky. "If so, we will probably see this happen more often now."

 

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Sinkholes seems to be the consensus.


"Huge, mysterious gaping holes in Northern Siberia may not be such a mystery anymore. One scientist has pinned down a cause and, spoiler alert, it's not aliens or weapons testing, as had been theorized.

The first hole discovered in the Yamal Peninsula, which is 260 feet wide, is likely a sinkhole caused by melting ice or permafrost, University of Alaska geophysicist Vladimir Romanovsky tells LiveScience."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/01/newser-mystery-giant-holes-siberia/13455833/

 

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Vladimir Romanovsky concludes the cause for the holes appearance is the same as the cause reported by Dr. Jason Box [Bells link in post #5]. Melting permafrost resulting in trapped methane release. The melting permafrost is the problem.

 

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You need to figure out why you want to minimize [normalize] this type of event under the present circumstances. You're in denial. The warm summer in Siberia is associated with climate change. The drought on the west coast of the US isn't normal. It's the worst drought in California history. The place is burning down. Trying to normalize such events is counterproductive.

 

Like I said, "melting permafrost and methane release due to the warm year they had in Siberia."

And hysterical hyperbole is also counterproductive. I live on the west coast; it's not burning down, although we do have a drought problem and it is related to climate change (as well as our misuse of water.)

 

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Pingo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A pingo, also called a hydrolaccolith, is a mound of earth-covered ice found in the Arctic and subarctic that can reach up to 70 metres (230 ft) in height and up to 600 m (2,000 ft) in diameter. The term originated as the Inuvialuktun word for a small hill. A pingo is a periglacial landform, which is defined as a nonglacial landform or process linked to colder climates.
. . .

Locations

Tuktoyaktuk in the Mackenzie Delta of the Northwest Territories has one of the highest concentrations of pingos, with some 1,350 examples. Pingo National Landmark protects eight of these features. Alaska is home to the Kadleroshilik Pingo, the highest known pingo in the world. Other places with pingos include Nunavut and Yukon in Canada, Greenland, Siberia, and the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.
======================

 

Remember those huge, mysterious holes that carved out the Earth seemingly overnight in Siberia, Russia?

A research team was finally able to descend into one of the craters for the first time, thanks to Siberia's frigid weather, and now, scientists from the group said they hope the expedition will finally answer questions about what caused the holes to form.

High temperatures in the largely uninhabited Yamal Peninsula, where the holes are located, usually don't creep above 0 degrees this time of year, and surprisingly, that provides an advantage for the research team, according to Vladimir Pushkarev, director of the Russian Center of Arctic Exploration.

The freezing temperatures solidify the walls of the crater, RT News reports, providing a stable foundation for the crew to rappel down the side and into the bottom. "We managed to go down into the funnel, all was successful," said Pushkarev. "We used climbing equipment, and it is easier to do this in winter, than in summer, with the ground now hard."

The Siberian Times details how the team rappelled just under 54 feet down into the opening, before touching foot on a frozen lake that scientists believe is something like 34 feet deep. Once there, the team collected samples from the frozen lake, the crater and the air inside the crater and ran radiolocation tests to analyze the composition of the earth.

Scientists will analyze the samples in the coming months and said they hope to have some sort of solid answer on the origins of the crater by the time their next expedition begins in April 2015.

"As of now we don't see anything dangerous in the sudden appearance of such holes, but we've got to study them properly to make absolutely sure we understand the nature of their appearance and don't need to be afraid about them," Pushkarev told the Siberian Times.

OK
Now what?

 

now they will see the actual percentage of the hydrates that might have caused this explosion.