MOSCOW — A natural phenomenon first observed by scientists just six years ago and now recurring with alarming frequency in Siberia is causing the ground to explode spontaneously and with tremendous force, leaving craters up to 100 feet deep.
When Yevgeny Chuvilin, a Moscow geologist with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, arrived this summer at the rim of the latest blast site, called Crater 17, “it left quite an impression,” he said.
The pit plunged into darkness, surrounded by the table-flat, featureless tundra. As Chuvilin stood looking in, he said, slabs of dirt and ice occasionally peeled off the permafrost of the crater wall and tumbled in.
“It was making noises. It was like something alive,” Chuvilin said.
While initially a mystery, scientists have established that the craters appearing in the far north of western Siberia are caused by subterranean gases, and the recent flurry of explosions is possibly related to global warming, Chuvilin said.
Since the first site was found in 2014, Russian geologists have detected 16 more on the Yamal and Gydansk peninsulas, two slender fingers of land stretching into the Arctic Ocean.
Chuvilin said the conditions causing the explosions, which are still not fully understood, are probably specific to the geology of the area, as similar craters have not appeared elsewhere in Siberia or in permafrost zones in Canada and Alaska that are also affected by global warming.