New Methane Gas Explosion Craters Found in Siberia

                                             Now Methane Explosion Craters are Forming in Siberia

Last summer Russian scientists reported discovering several large craters that had been recently blasted out of the Siberian permafrost.  The craters had steep sides and were surrounded by rings of sediment that had  been ejected from the permafrost.   Russian scientists who visited the craters reported that there was no sign of any kind of volcanic activity.  They did find elevated levels of methane gas (CH4) in the craters, and proposed that the craters formed by the eruption of huge amounts of methane.  They suggested that frozen methane hydrates buried below the permafrost had been destabilized by warming temperatures, and suddenly released large amounts of methane that blasted its way to the surface.

Now Russian scientists are reporting the discovery of four more methane explosion craters  on the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia.   Like the previously identified craters, the four new ones are fresh-appearing and unvegetated (see above) and probably formed at most a few months before being located.    The Russians suggest there may now be many methane explosion craters like these being blasted out through permafrost in other parts of Siberia.

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said  

"there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And..... it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones."

Scientists studying global warming know exactly how CO2 contributes to the Greenhouse effect in the Earth's atmosphere --- it is a known known.  And we know that we don't know exactly how future global warming will affect the earth.  Yes, temperatures will go up, but the precise effects on things like the monsoons, droughts, cloud cover, seasonality cannot be precisely determined---these are known unknowns.

But the sudden occurrence of methane explosion craters from permafrost constitutes an unknown unknown in studies of Global Warming.   This phenomena has never been seen before by any permafrost scientist and never reported by any native or inhabitant of the Arctic.  These methane explosions were not predicted by global warming models.  We don't know what is triggering these explosions  and we don't know how much methane is being vented to the atmosphere by these explosions and we don't know if these explosions will become increasingly common in Siberia as global warming continues to heat up the Arctic.  We don't know if methane explosion craters will eventually start to form in Alaska, northern Greenland, and other permafrost areas.  We don't know.

These methane explosion craters are a previously unforeseen side effect of Global Warming.   As Gomer Pyle was fond of saying...."surprise surprise."