A giant hole in Siberia, known as the "Gateway to Hell", is expanding faster than anticipated due to climate change, scientists have found. According to Business Insider, the Batagaika Crater, located in the freezing Yana Highlands, is 200 acres wide and 300 feet deep. It is the shape of a stingray, a horseshoe crab, or a giant tadpole. It started as a sliver, barely visible in declassified satellite imagery from the 1960s. However, the hole tripled in size in just 30 years, the scientists said.
The Batagay crater is the second-oldest permafrost on Earth. It is continuing to expand outward at an "accelerated rate". It is so big that it is visible from space and now the experts are flocking to the deep pit to learn everything about it.
Speaking to Business Insider, Roger Michaelides, a geophysicist at Washington University, said, "You're talking mostly about frozen dirt underground, which by definition you often can't see unless it's been exposed somehow, like in this mega slump."
"I think there is a lot we can learn from Batagaika, not only in terms of understanding how Batagaika will evolve with time, but also how similar features might develop and evolve over the Arctic," he added. "Even if they're a tenth or a hundredth the size of Batagaika, the physics is fundamentally the same," Mr Michaelides further said.
Separately, a study published earlier this year found that the crater is growing deeper because permafrost melt has almost reached the bedrock at the bottom. "The volume of the bowl-shaped retrogressive thaw slump (RTS) increases by approximately 1 million cubic meters per year," glaciologist Alexander Kizyakov wrote in the study, per New York Post.
This will pose problems for the nearby Batagay River, as it will increase erosion on the riverbank and affect the surrounding habitat, scientists warned.
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The researchers also noted that the rapidly expanding crater could also increase greenhouse gas emissions, as frozen nutrients thaw and are released into the atmosphere. They estimate that 4,000 to 5,000 tons of previously permafrost-locked organic carbon is currently released annually, with that number likely to increase each year.
Now, as the crater is still melting, scientists have warned that this gateway can engulf most of the land and prove dangerous for nearby villages once more areas start to melt.
Nikita Tananaev, a researcher at Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk, who was not part of the study, said that the nearby ecosystems are altering permanently because of leakage from the crater. "This will lead to significant alterations to the riverine habitat, and the effect of sediment escaping the slump (the Batagaika crater) is even seen in the Yana River, the major river in the vicinity," he said.
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