What will the thawing of permafrost lead to? CNBC: Siberia is cratered by melting permafrost. Results of a new study

Melting permafrost will lead to serious consequences for Russia, the newspaper reports. New news"In the article" She melted ":

« Scientists from the University of Cambridge recently published the results of a study on economic consequences global warming, estimating the damage to the world economy at 60 trillion. dollars. Among the most affected countries will be Russia, two-thirds of whose territory is covered with permafrost.»

For me, these apocalyptic pictures are already a reality. For the second summer in Tyumen I sleep under a warm blanket, although earlier two or three months of the year were quite hot.

So, let's sum up the main Negative consequences, which can present the Tyumen region (together with the districts) global change climate:

1. Destruction of infrastructure: railways, highways, bridges, ports, airfields, high-voltage power lines, main oil and gas pipelines, oil and gas storage facilities.
2. Destruction of houses and buildings. Accordingly, the industry.
3. Ecological catastrophy. Oil and gas leaks, methane emissions (this is for global ecology problem).
4. Difficult epidemiological situation. Opened animal burial grounds.
5. Food shortage. Problems of northern delivery.
6. Deterioration of health. Cancer is the leading cause of death.

These problems will affect the YaNAO in the first place, KhMAO most, the south of the Tyumen region is not directly. Everything to the east will be in the sphere of this catastrophe, except for Primorye and the south of Kamchatka, as well as the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and the Murmansk region will be in the impact zone. Well, of course, Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia.

Geocryological Hazard Map under Climate Change


1- stable area; 2- zone of moderate risk; 3 - zone of high geocryological danger.
Source: Methods for assessing the consequences of climate change for physical and biological systems / Roshydromet. M., 2012

But these problems will give rise to new ones: economic, social, political and others. The East will become more dead (there is a decrease in the population there, see about this: "").

• Economic problems. The complexity of infrastructure operation will be added to the falling hydrocarbon production, and, accordingly, the commissioning of new fields will become more difficult, and this will lead to the fact that the stock of production wells will not be updated. However, there is Timan-Pechersk oil, the Volga region and the south of the Tyumen region, for Russia this oil may be enough in an emergency. But we must keep in mind that the YNAO and KhMAO account for 2/3 of the oil produced in Russia and 90% of the gas.
• Social problems. Living in deteriorating conditions on a permanent basis will not be possible, a significant part of the population of the regions will decide to leave the region. The development will continue, but the main method is rotational. There will be small shift camps, without social amenities, with Spartan conditions and the psychology of a temporary worker and a thieves " And what does he need - around five hundred, and whoever survives whom, He will prove who was right when they lock him up!". Wage in the region will grow many times, as there will be few people willing to put themselves in danger of perishing in the swamps. Perhaps, however, the restoration of construction battalions and these battalions will be used for the construction of roads and important social facilities. The term of service in the army will be increased to five years.
• Political issues. The management of the region will be possible only by measures of total control and military discipline. Therefore, no elections of heads of regions and municipalities. Military dictatorship subordinate to the president. Apparently, the president is already ready for this option, so the region has already been taken out of the subordination of the prime minister. So far, there is no talk of a military dictatorship, but over time the topic will be raised. By the way, the management experience in the region will eventually expand deeper into Russia.

"Even now in Western Siberia, the permafrost is thawing by 4 centimeters a year, and in the next 20 years its border will move 80 kilometers north"- and these words were said already five years ago. So the problem is not new and has been known about for a long time. And the changes will not take place so rapidly as to completely turn into a spontaneous event. But the proc process is going according to a destructive scenario. No one knows how deep this process will go. In history, I repeat, there has already been an increase in temperature above the modern one by 1.3 ° C (See "").

By the way, earlier the deserts of the Gobi (Mongolia), Kara-Kum (Turkmenistan) and the deserts of Kazakhstan were also green oases suitable for life. Now it's deserts. However, there is another threat to Siberia, which is still great danger than melting ice. " We can have deserts in Siberia in 50 years - sand dunes with hot sand. Or maybe vice versa, we can get an icy desert. This is all due to the fact that with a high degree of probability the Gulf Stream can stop", - quotes the words of a geobiophysicist, a leading researcher at the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexey Karnaukhov newspaper "RBC daily".

And this is a real chronicle. According to RIA Novosti, the Amur region has been living in emergency mode for more than two weeks due to the difficult flood situation in several districts of the region.

« The authorities of the Amur Region, which suffered from a severe flood, are ready to evacuate the population of 30 settlements in the event of an increase in water discharge from the Zeya hydroelectric power station, the governor of the region said at a meeting of the government commission Oleg Kozhemyako. "We received a letter from the Zeya hydroelectric power station about increasing the discharge of water from the hydroelectric power station, a decision was made to evacuate the population according to the worst-case scenario," the governor said. He clarified that, according to estimates, 30 settlements and Blagoveshchensk will be flooded. The Amur region has been living in emergency mode for more than two weeks due to the difficult flood situation in several districts of the region. Currently, a storm warning has been issued in the region, where 16 villages have already been flooded, including more than 300 residential buildings.

The most difficult situation in the event of an unfavorable development of events may develop in the Konstantinovsky district, where the settlements are located in the lowland part. Zeya HPP on Tuesday sent letters to all interested organizations in the Amur Region warning that if the reservoir level reaches a critical level (319.3 meters), all gates of the surface spillway will be opened. To date, the inflow of water into the reservoir continues to be high and amounts to 8.9 thousand cubic meters per second. As the head of Blagoveshchensk, Pavel Berezovsky, said at the meeting, in the event of a big wave coming to the city, 210 private houses, 66 apartment buildings, three hostels, three kindergartens and three schools. In the flood zone will be 16.520 thousand people. "The city has prepared eight evacuation centers based on buildings that are located on a hill. The situation is under control. There is a supply of food and necessary equipment," he said. »

I think the frequency of such messages will increase.

The city of Khanty-Mansiysk was flooded after a rainstorm on July 12, 2012 Private sector

Center for winter sports. A.V. Filippenko. City of Khanty-Mansiysk. July 12, 2012

A new threat to the Earth's atmosphere has been identified

Permafrost ceases to be eternal due to global warming. It is melting, releasing methane reserves from its cold bowels, the atmospheric concentration of which, according to the most conservative estimates of scientists, has more than tripled over the past 150 years.

In general, carbon dioxide was considered a priori to be the main culprit of the greenhouse effect and, as a result, climate warming. But now it turns out that the atmosphere has a more insidious enemy - methane. How significant can be the impact of a decrease in the volume of underwater permafrost and gas hydrates (this is an ice mass with a “hidden” gas in it) on methane emissions from bottom sediments into the water column of the Siberian shelf seas and further into the atmosphere? Could this lead to additional change climate and affect the ecological situation on the planet? To this question, "MK" tried to find an answer together with scientists. Why did I have to go to Tomsk, where the International Arctic Forum was held within the walls of the Polytechnic University (TPU), dedicated to the problem of studying the biogeochemical consequences of degradation (thawing) of permafrost in the Arctic Ocean.

The climate is warming - the permafrost is melting

But first, let's figure out why gas hydrates were mentioned at all. Back in the 1960s, Soviet scientists (Professor Yuri Makogon and co-authors) discovered that methane (CH4) in the form of gas hydrates can exist in permafrost. The basis for this discovery was numerous accidents in oil and gas pipelines, where low temperatures plugs formed from methane hydrates.

If you take this substance in your hands, it resembles a snowball - compressed snow or ice. But if you set it on fire, this "snowball" will burn no worse than a gas burner. It is generally accepted that the main deposits of hydrates are concentrated in the area of ​​the Arctic shelf under the underwater permafrost.

Specialists are now only developing a system for its production in industrial scale. Members of the international scientific consortium under the leadership of Russian scientists - the head of the laboratory of the Pacific Oceanological Institute. V.I.Ilyichev (POI FEB RAS) Professor of TPU Igor Semiletov and professor of TPU Natalia Shakhova revealed another potential of gas hydrates: due to the melting of underwater permafrost, methane escapes into the atmosphere and enhances the greenhouse effect.

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From one cubic centimeter of methane hydrate, 160-180 cubic centimeters of gas are released, which breaks through to the surface of the sea in the form of bubbles. There are many cases where even drillships have capsized or been damaged by hydrate gas breakthrough. One of the main versions of the formation of giant craters on the Yamal Peninsula is also associated with the degradation of permafrost and the rapid destabilization of hydrates in the form of explosions.

Graph of the increase in the estimate of the annual methane emission into the atmosphere over the shelf of the seas of the Eastern Arctic (MVA)

According to 2014 data - 16 million tons.

The graph showing the growth of methane emissions into the atmosphere looks intimidating. But only at first glance. Scientists promise that even with an atmospheric concentration of 100 million tons of methane per year, there will be no sharp warming. For a climate catastrophe, it is necessary that 1-2 orders of magnitude more be emitted into the atmosphere.

Is it possible? Should we be worried about methane at all then? Especially since there is still two orders of magnitude more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere? It turned out that there are reasons - if not for panic, then for anxiety. According to Igor Semiletov, who spoke at the forum, the content of methane in the Earth's atmosphere continues to grow faster than CO2: over the past 150 years, the concentration of CH4 in the atmosphere has increased by about 3 times. In addition, methane has a much higher radiation activity than carbon dioxide (from 20 to 40 times).

For a long time, scientists could not understand why the highest concentrations of CH4 were recorded in the atmosphere of the Arctic region (this phenomenon was called the “Arctic maximum of atmospheric CH4”). At first they thought that thermokarst lakes were to blame (lakes formed as a result of subsidence of soil at the site of thawing ground ice) and swamps. The Arctic seas were not considered at all as suspects. But in vain!

"Layer cake" of the Arctic

To find "evidence", since the late 1990s, Russian scientists have organized and carried out 30 expeditions to the Northern sea ​​route. First, on the hydrographic vessels of the Arkhangelsk hydrobase, then for another five years they sailed on small vessels with a displacement of less than 100 tons, entering such shallow water areas where not a single ocean-going research vessel can enter. However, research on small vessels had to be stopped: due to the reduction of the ice cover of the Northern Arctic Ocean in the seas of the Eastern Arctic (MVA), winds began to reach hurricane strength. “Once in the fall, our ship, forced to stand at two anchors, was dragged by waves and wind in one day for a distance of about 20 nautical miles, the height of the waves reached 5-6 meters,” recalls Semiletov.

In 2008, a 45-day Russian-Swedish joint expedition took place aboard the Yakov Smirnitsky hydrographic vessel, organized by the Arctic Research Laboratory of the Pacific Ocean Research Institute of the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Stockholm and Gothenburg Universities. In 2011, the Shakhova-Semiletov group began the first drilling operations in the Laptev Sea, on the so-called fast ice (fixed ice along the coast), where 17 wells have already been drilled. The purpose of these works was to sample deep (as far as possible) bottom sediments to study the patterns of distribution and thawing rates of underwater permafrost in the coastal zone of the Laptev Sea, the methane potential of permafrost and the geological control of methane emissions.

Igor Semiletov. Photo: Igor Semiletov.

“The preliminary results we got were extremely interesting,” explains Semiletov. “So, for example, we found that the state of the permafrost in the Ivashkinskaya lagoon, which we studied, does not at all correspond to classical ideas. What we know from textbooks does not work there. Without going into details, I will explain that we discovered a real " layered cake” from thawed and frozen rocks and a microcanyon of an absolutely incomprehensible origin, which lies at depths of the seabed of about two to three meters. Previously, it was believed that it should not be there, because the ice practically freezes with sediment there, the permafrost in this place is stable ... In autumn, we discovered powerful methane emissions from this microcanyon, which were not found in winter. What does it say? On infiltration of deep gas. I note that we are talking about preliminary results that require a more detailed study, which we plan to conduct in 2017-2018.”

“We lived peacefully with the bears”

Work in expeditions carried out in the period from the mid-1990s to the present, I had to work both in winter and in spring. Where during these periods the hydrographic vessel could not pass, the sledge-tractor train helped.

Member of a number of winter expeditions to the fast ice of the Laptev Sea, Senior Researcher, Department of Geocryology, Faculty of Geology, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Lomonosov Vladimir Tumskoy He told us about how such trips went. Wind and frost up to 40 were not the main obstacles to obtaining scientific results ...

“Preparation for a winter expedition begins, as a rule, with planning and selection of equipment and equipment,” says Tumskoy. “Then we throw all this into Tiksi, either by river or by plane. Gathering together in Tiksi, we form a sled-tractor train: tractors, a self-propelled drilling rig on caterpillar tracks, towed houses (mounted on steel sleds) for people to work and live, drilling equipment, provisions in the form of frozen reindeer carcasses, fish, milk, tea, coffee. Food in the north should be fatty, and then no cold will frighten.

In such a composition, the train usually travels tens, and sometimes hundreds of kilometers, to the place of well drilling. The road itself takes the polar explorers several days: the equipment is heavy, the ice is ragged (hummocks are a heap of ice fragments, up to 10-20 meters in height), you have to go around it. It often happens that the equipment gets stuck in the snow, you have to reattach two tractors to one sled.

Arriving "to the point", the expedition, total weight which pulls under 100 tons, should disperse as quickly as possible so as not to create a large load on the ice. Well, when everything is ready for work, drilling begins. Drillers extract a shelf core from under the water, after which the scientific team begins to take the necessary measurements right on the ice. Important Before sending samples to the laboratory for big land determine their humidity, temperature, salinity and other properties. The gas is sampled first, and highly accurate measurements are made immediately in the laboratory towed house. Later, in the institutes of Vladivostok, Tomsk, Moscow and abroad, the isotopic composition and radiocarbon age of methane, the molecular and isotopic composition of organic matter are studied in sediment samples. The goal of the researchers is to assess the methane potential of precipitation as a source of potential release into the water column and then into the atmosphere.

However, wresting this knowledge from the harsh nature of the Arctic is sometimes difficult. “We can only work at temperatures up to 35 degrees Celsius,” explains Vladimir Tumskoy, “if it’s colder, the drilling rig works with great difficulty in the cold, and the sediment core brought to the surface quickly freezes. Another hindrance is strong wind literally blowing specialists off their feet. Sometimes, when the deadlines are running out and it is no longer possible to postpone drilling, we prepare a wind barrier in the form of a dense piece of awning, which we stretch with a wall and thus deflect the wind flow from the well.”

Vladimir Tumskoy. Photo: TPU

Zoological factors are sometimes added to meteorological factors. Arctic foxes and birds are the most frequent guests that polar explorers feed with their supplies, but geologists also met more severe inhabitants of the Arctic - polar bears. “Bears come to us from time to time, because we often work in the territory where their migration routes pass,” continues Tumskoy. - We will drill a hole in the ice in the spring, then we see - the guests have come: they examine, touch the equipment with their paws, drink water from our well. Once we were especially concerned about the fate of our colleague, who was doing acoustic measurements in a tent on a crack, and a bear approached the tent. We shout from afar, scare away the clubfoot, and at least the bear stands and, apparently, thinks: to eat the researcher in headphones or not? We still managed to drive him away. And then our acoustician, a researcher at the Pacific Oceanological Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Denis Chernykh, came out as if nothing had happened and was surprised that we were all so excited ... But in general, we live peacefully with bears, despite the fact that there have been direct contacts more than once - about ten meters from me was a clubfoot. The main thing is to immediately show who is the owner in this territory, so that the animal does not have a desire to return. How do we do it? Yes, it’s very simple: verbal wishes to retire into the hummocks are supported by shooting in the air to scare away.

The planet no longer has an ice plug

The largest three-month biogeochemical expedition across the Arctic Ocean took place in 2014 onboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden. It was called SWERUS C3. It was attended by 84 researchers (19 women and 65 men) from 14 countries. The expedition was supposed to confirm the presence of methane mega-emissions discovered by Russian scientists. Scientists have done this and... found many new methane release sites. In total, more than 500 (!) large leaks (sips) were discovered along the route of the icebreaker. And these are only those that were found under the vessel along its route. Laid as if by a thread on the MVA map, they occupied an area of ​​over 2 million square kilometers! Imagine how many tens, and maybe hundreds of thousands of vultures have not yet been discovered.

The main result of the latest expedition of Russian scientists aboard the research vessel "Akademik Lavrentyev" (it ended in Vladivostok on November 2 this year) was the discovery of an increase in the scale and intensity of methane release from previously detected leaks.

The conclusion made by scientists is that the underwater permafrost is no longer as stable as previously thought, there is no longer a solid ice plug that goes hundreds of meters deep. The area of ​​megaleaks of methane is growing, which causes general concern among specialists.

But, even despite the participation in the Arctic expeditions of many foreign researchers, written jointly with our scientists in articles in the most prestigious scientific journals such as Science, Nature Gescience, the conclusions about the leading role of the Siberian Arctic shelf as a source of formation of the Arctic atmospheric CH4 maximum still meet with gigantic opposition to part of the world scientific community. In fact, it is divided into two parts. On one side was an international scientific consortium led by Russian scientists, which bases its scientific conclusions on the basis of direct complex and interdisciplinary observations in severe storm conditions. icy arctic, on the other - desk workers from various countries who are building atmospheric models of the formation of the atmospheric Arctic maximum of CH4 due to the transfer of air from tropical latitudes. “This is impossible because wetlands (wetlands) of tropical latitudes are not such a powerful source of CH4 as previously thought,” explains Semiletov. - And you try to answer the question: is it possible to fill an empty glass to the top with water by pouring water from another incomplete glass of the same size? My personal opinion is that behind all this is the unwillingness of some rather powerful politicized groups to recognize the fact that the global methane budget, formalized at the end of the last century, in which the main natural source on our planet are the tropics, does not correspond to reality - real new data. And, of course, behind this are the financial interests of a number of groups that receive multi-million dollar grants for their activities.

The expedition on the icebreaker Oden took several months. Photo: TPU

So, while we wait for the “tropics and the Arctic” dispute to be resolved, it looks like we will have to remain in the dark - how soon will serious climate change come? After all, if our scientists are right, the entire shelf of the seas of the eastern Arctic in the coming decades may go into the state in which the anomalous regions are now - there seems to be a through thawing of underwater permafrost. The release of colossal volumes of the potent greenhouse gas CH4 could lead to a self-accelerating process of global warming.

But maybe it's scary. global warming will it retreat and gas hydrates will freeze again? Moreover, some climatologists have long been talking about the approach of an ice age on our planet.

“According to the ancient climate system, we should have already noticed signs of an ice age, but it is not coming,” Igor Semiletov shatters hope. - Over the past 2.5 million years, ice ages and periods of global warming have alternated approximately every 105 thousand years. Now we are witnessing a breakdown in this ancient system - warming has dragged on for thousands of years ... The most likely root cause for this is anthropogenic, and the responsibility lies with the greenhouse effect, the main potential of which so far is CO2 emissions. By the way, signs of this effect are not only the growth of the thermometer around the world, but also the increase in the frequency of cyclones and hurricanes.”

Scientists still cannot answer the timing of the possible onset of the next stage of additional climate warming. Do we have ten or thirty years left before the onset of irreversible processes? For an accurate diagnosis, more comprehensive and extended studies are required with a focus on the Arctic seas, where more than 80% of the entire underwater permafrost of the Arctic Ocean is assumed to exist, under which hydrate reserves may lurk, exceeding the current amount of methane by about two orders of magnitude. Ideally, according to Semiletov, synchronized annual and all-season studies are required using well-equipped modern equipment research vessels, flying laboratories and space satellites. It is also desirable to organize another observation station on Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island, which is located close to the known large and very large megasips. But for now, we have to literally wait for the weather by the sea.

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The destruction of hydrates on the seabed occurs in various regions of our planet, including the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, the Black Sea, Lake Baikal, near about. Svalbard... However, in these deep reservoirs, gas bubbles, as a rule, do not reach the surface, since they completely dissolve. In contrast to the shallow Arctic East Siberian shelf, where a significant part of the bubble CH4 does not have time to dissolve and reaches the sea surface.

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The concentration of atmospheric methane over the Arctic is 10 percent higher than anywhere else on the planet.

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On November 24, in order to improve the efficiency of research on the basis of TPU, the International Arctic Siberian science Center, which brought together scientists from 15 universities in 6 countries.

70% of our country is located in the permafrost zone.

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Methane is a greenhouse gas, it, like carbon dioxide (CO2), keeps the thermal radiation from the surface of our planet, which should leave the Earth in space, which means that it creates conditions for further climate warming.

The rest of the planet, and climatologists, are tired of warning that this is further accelerating climate change. This region holds vast reserves organic carbon- mainly in the form of permafrost and ice clathrates, in which methane (a powerful greenhouse gas) is locked.

Siberian permafrost poses a particular danger. Once the yedoma begins to melt, it can't be stopped, as the soil micro-organisms will begin to eat the carbon and produce heat, further melting. Melting edoma - this is the same crucial moment.

And for the first time, scientists have undertaken to predict when this will happen. Anton Waks from Oxford University (Great Britain) and his colleagues have reconstructed 500 thousand years of the history of the Siberian permafrost. We already know how the average world temperature rose and fell during this period, how the ice sheets approached and retreated, so it only remained to simulate the reaction of the Siberian soil to these processes.

In fact, this is not so simple, because there is no direct data on this subject, and we must look for an indirect method. Therefore, the researchers visited six caves located from north to south almost on the same line. Two of them are located under the hot Gobi desert, three more are in the area where there are spots of permafrost, and the last one is on the edge of Siberia in the zone of continuous permafrost.

The scientists focused on stalagmites, which only grow when there is water in the cave. If the ground is frozen, there is no water. Thus, it was possible to compile a chronicle of temperature changes over the caves. And in the most northern of them, stalagmites grew only once - during a particularly warm interglacial period, 424-374 thousand years ago. The average world temperature was then one and a half degrees above the average of the last 10 thousand years. In other words, today's permafrost will become vulnerable when global warming exceeds these same one and a half degrees.

When will this happen? Between 1850 and 2005, the planet's temperature rose by 0.8°C, according to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even if tomorrow humanity stops producing greenhouse gases, over the next twenty years it will get warmer by another 0.2 °C. But this cessation, of course, will not happen: emissions are only increasing. Moreover, new fossil fuel power plants are being built, which means that we will be smoking for at least a few more decades.

Lakes in the area of ​​the Bovanenkovskoye and Kruzenshternskoye gas condensate fields in photographs from the Landsat-8 satellite (on the left - the visible spectrum, on the right - IR, synthesis). Photo: Professor Vasily Bogoyavlensky

Satellite photographs have revealed more than 200 bright blue lakes on the Yamal Peninsula and the Gydan Peninsula, formed in areas of thawed permafrost (“permafrost”). Like giant whirlpools, these unusually colored lakes are bubbling methane, the newspaper writes. The Siberian Times, referring to the latest research of Professor Vasily Bogoyavlensky from Russian Academy Sciences.

The lakes were formed as a result of thermokarst - subsidence earth's surface due to the thawing of frozen rocks. When the “permafrost” thaws, gaps are formed, which are filled with melted water. At the same time, natural gas begins to come out of the ground.

Scientists note that the lakes in Yamal are very different from normal thermokarst lakes dark color. These lakes are bright blue and contain bubbles of gas that enters the water before being released into the atmosphere.

More than 200 blue lakes in the Far North are located in close proximity to the large Bovanenkovskoye and Kruzenshternskoye gas condensate fields. According to the professor, these lakes have a number of characteristic features by which they can be distinguished from other lakes. These are the anomalous blue color of the water, the presence of a crater at the bottom and gas emissions from the water, traces of gas in the seasonal ice cover, active coastal erosion and swelling of permafrost near the water's edge.

Professor Bogoyavlensky suggests that the formation of lakes is also associated with seismic activity. For example, over one of the fields in Yamal, they formed along two lines, forming a giant cross.

Tellingly, new sinkholes and lakes form even at temperatures around 0°C.

The illustration shows satellite imagery one of these lakes from photographs of Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 satellites.

The photo on the right shows that a giant crater has formed in the ground near one of the lakes. Perhaps from the "explosion" of the gas bubble, although scientists cannot say for sure what was inside the bubble before the burst - water, ice, or something else. This is a key question, after answering which it will be possible to make some predictions about the appearance of new such craters.

At least 10 such craters are already known in the region. This is what the crater looks like when shooting from a helicopter.

Photo: press service of the Governor of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

Vasily Bogoyavlensky and colleagues actively studied the appearance of these lakes on satellite photographs of 2015-2016.

The “permafrost” is thawing not only on the Yamal Peninsula and the Gydan Peninsula, but also in Siberia. For example, in Yakutia, the giant Batagai crater is gradually expanding, which is called the "gate to hell" or "failure into the past".

A thermokarst basin about 100 meters deep in the Verkhoyansk region of the Yakutsk Territory exposes ancient geological layers of different eras. The cleft reaches a kilometer in length and up to 800 meters in width. It was formed in the 1960s after a section of the taiga was cut down 8 km southwest of the village of Batagay. Since then, as temperatures have risen, the permafrost has continued to melt and the crevasse has grown by about 15 meters per year.

Photo: NEFU named after M.K. Ammosov

The Batagay crater is very interesting for paleontologists. For example, in 2009, a well-preserved 4,400-year-old foal skeleton and the remains of a bison cub were found here. Among other finds are the bones of mammoths and deer.

Global warming and the constant increase in average global temperatures allows us to predict that the thawing of permafrost will continue further. It is likely that such gigantic sinkholes may form in other places in the taiga in the future.

The thawing of permafrost in Yamal and the Gydan peninsula is dangerous because methane reserves, one of the greenhouse gases, are released into the atmosphere. In terms of its ability to retain heat transfer, methane is 30 times more efficient than CO 2 .

This will make it even more difficult for the atmosphere to release heat and increase the greenhouse effect, which will cause the planet's surface to begin to heat up faster, so that the greenhouse process will accelerate itself. Scientists have already tried to evaluate the effect of the return of hydrocarbons to the atmosphere due to the melting of permafrost. According to one study, up to 205 billion tons of hydrocarbons will enter the atmosphere by 2100 if the process of permafrost thawing accelerates with rising global temperatures, as it is happening now.

Previous studies have suggested that permafrost thaw would begin if global temperatures rise another 1.5°C. But the formation of methane bubbles in the soil and bright blue lakes in Yamal may be a sign that the process has already begun.

In Siberia, scientists have already found more than 7,000 methane bubbles in the soil, as shown in the video. Such bubbles can be released and lead to the formation of a crater.

The thawing of permafrost does not bode well for humanity. One can recall the Permian mass extinction - one of major disasters biosphere in the history of the Earth, which led to the extinction of 96% of all marine species and 73% terrestrial species vertebrates. According to one version, the Permian mass extinction arose due to a lack of oxygen in the oceans, which resulted in a chain of events. Perhaps it began with a massive release of methane or sulfur from earth's crust in atmosphere.

A quarter of the earth in the northern hemisphere is permanently frozen. But a warming climate is causing the permafrost to melt, which releases greenhouse gases, further accelerating the process. Report from the Lena Delta.

Navigating among the 1,500 islets in the Lena Delta requires impeccable concentration, keeping one eye on the radar to avoid running aground, and the other on the coastal landmarks that dot this vast expanse of water and land. Before flowing into the Laptev Sea in northern Siberia, the river overflows so widely that its banks turn into foggy stripes on the horizon.

Samoilov Island is distinguished by a wooden hut located on the shore, where scientists and rangers of the reserve live, which covers the mouth of the river and the slopes of the Kharaulakh Range. Only now, slow but irreversible erosion threatens to plunge the house into the waters of the Lena. In the future, the entire island may also disappear: a strong rise in water as a result of the spring melting of ice erodes its shores.

Be that as it may, the main blow for this 5 km2 island is the retreat of permafrost under the onslaught of climate warming. It's about about soils whose top layer thaws in warm time year, while maintaining below zero temperatures in depth for at least two years in a row.

“The Samoilov ecosystem is threatened with potential destruction,” says an article on the subject in the journal Biogeosciences. Julia Boike, a German woman who coordinated the study, and her colleagues from the Institute of Polar and marine research them. Alfred Wegener (AWI) are not going to put up with such a prospect.

Every year from April to September, AWI staff and their Russian colleagues from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute and the Permafrost Institute travel to Samoilov Island to study soil and landscape changes, as well as the relationship between climate warming and permafrost melting.

Two thirds of the area of ​​Russia

The island on which the modern research station (funded by the Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics) is located is becoming a favorite observation point: permafrost covers 95% of the area of ​​Siberia and two thirds of the territory of Russia. In general, frozen soil accounts for a quarter of the entire northern hemisphere, mainly in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Russia and China.

Western Europe is distinguished by alpine-type permafrost, which is found in a number of mountain ranges. Its structure and geodynamics differ from frozen soils in northern latitudes, but it is also sensitive to climate change. So, on August 23, the movement of the soil as a result of thawing permafrost carried away eight people near the Swiss village of Bondo.

“In some places, the Siberian permafrost formed a very long time ago, back in the Pleistocene (the period from 2.6 million years ago to 11,000 years ago), says Yulia Boyke. “It is very cold, around -9ºC, and goes down to a depth of almost 1,500 meters in the north of Yakutia.”

“On Samoilov Island, it is relatively stable and high content organic matter with the presence of peatlands,” she adds, putting on thick rubber boots, without which it is impossible to walk on the viscous tundra covering the surface of the island. The young scientists accompanying her go with her to Kurungni. The neighboring island has complex ice formations, and its terrain is formed by thermokarst deposits (obtained as a result of subsidence of long-term frozen land).

The valleys through which AWI scientists walk for six hours are full of streams. “We want to understand whether this water comes from seasonal rainfall or from melting ice as soil changes,” explains geomorphologist Anne Morgenstern. She always has a notebook ready at hand, and a backpack full of taken water samples.

Huge freezer

The melting of permafrost in Siberia and other regions where scientists are measuring is a confirmed fact. Thanks to sensors located in several wells (some drilled to a depth of 100 meters), a Russian-German team of specialists has been able to register a temperature increase of 1.5-2 ºС since 2006.

“We are seeing a trend towards warming soils and rising air temperatures in winter time, - confirms Yulia Boyke. “The change in the temperature component affects the entire balance of energy flows, water and greenhouse gases.” An alarming conclusion, given that the Arctic is involved in the regulation of the entire earth's climate.

"Permafrost is a huge freezer," explains Torsten Sachs of the German Geological Research Center (GFZ), who is visiting the island for the eighth time. “If you leave the freezer door open, your pizza will defrost, your ice cream will melt, and microbes will begin to multiply on this organic matter.” Permafrost unleashes organic matter, which, under the action of microorganisms, release CO2 in the presence of oxygen or methane in an anaerobic environment, for example, in the Samoilov peatlands.

These greenhouse gases contribute to rising temperatures, which in turn lead to the melting of permafrost and the release of gases. Experts call this "retroactive process of carbon in permafrost." According to them, it contains 1,500 gigatonnes of carbon, which is twice the amount in the atmosphere.

Additional warming

But what are the proportions of carbon dioxide and methane released by soils during defrosting? The latter, by the way, creates a 25 times more powerful greenhouse effect. “This is one of the main questions for the future,” admits an employee of the National Center scientific research Gerhard Krinner.

The concern is all the greater because the models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that have been formed so far have not taken into account the effects of permafrost melting. “Additional warming due to permafrost melting is about 10%,” says Gerhardt Krinner. Thus, greenhouse gas emissions from permafrost could raise the thermometer by 0.3 ºС by 2100.

In the research station's lab (kept at a stable temperature by three deafeningly roaring generators), scientists look at graphs of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Methane peaks fall on summer period, however, data analysis remains a challenge at such high latitudes. The first period of measurements (2002-2012) was carried out without automated equipment, which is available at the modern base put into operation in 2013.

Three years earlier, during a visit to Samoilov Island, President Vladimir Putin felt that Russian-German cooperation on permafrost deserved better infrastructure. Until that moment, AWI employees (their first expedition to the island took place back in 1998) had to be content with the bare minimum: sleeping in tents, warming themselves with firewood (from the forest descending along the Lena) and using the huntsmen's hut as headquarters.

Process rates

Wintering was then impossible. “We simply couldn't collect data in the winter,” says Torsten Sachs. “It was necessary to add fuel to the external generator once every three days at a temperature of -40ºС during the polar night.” Other difficulties with data interpretation look much more familiar. Ten years is too short a period to detect changes in trends in gas flows over the long term. In addition, it is necessary to increase the number of observation posts, which is by no means so easy to achieve in Siberia, which is more than 20 times the size of France.

A good distance away from the station painted in the colors of the Russian flag, the AWI team is completing the construction of the “igloo”, which will house the computer and electronic equipment of the new meteorological tower in 2018. The fiberglass cocoon should create the necessary conditions for stable measurements, providing shelter from the ferocious winds and snowstorms of the Siberian winter. Like other buildings on the island, the igloo stands on stilts so as not to depend on the movement of the soil. So, at the first meteorological tower, the earth sank by 10 centimeters in a year.

“There is no longer any doubt about the link between global warming and permafrost melting,” says igloo builder Peter Schreiber. “Now the question is how fast the permafrost will continue to melt, and how nature will react to this process.”

Nature is the main manager in the conditions of the changes taking place in Siberia, notes Fedor Sellyakhov. The head of the research station acknowledges the changes that have taken place around him: “So, for example, 20 years ago there was not a single tree here, but only vegetation typical of the tundra. During a trip to the delta last year, I saw trees 2 meters high.”

Be that as it may, this native of Yakutia from the banks of the Vilyui does not believe in the anthropological causes of climate change. “This is the cycle of nature. It was warm here 100 years ago, then it became cold, and now another period of warming is beginning,” he says in his office, which is decorated with fossils found in the vicinity.

mammoth tusk

As for the permafrost, "it's probably melting, but slowly." “When we take a mammoth tusk out of the soil, we realize that the other end is still in the ground, still frozen. This is a sign that the permafrost remains very cold,” he continues. An unexpected consequence of the thawing of soils on far north was the development of hunting for ancient remains.

Günter Stoof, nicknamed "Molo", understands the attitude of his Russian friends. “Nature decides, not man,” says this AWI technician who has been the longest on the island. Now 65 years old, he vows that this season will be the last of his career (48 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic). This native East Germany was the youngest member of the nearly two-year-old Soviet expedition (1975-1977) tasked with building a base in Antarctica. He happened to visit the polar regions more than once, both alone and in groups.

His life path reflects a different story, the collaboration between the GDR and the USSR during the Cold War. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a scientific committee was formed to determine the program of scientific research for a united Germany. He recommended maintaining the polar direction and building it around the AWI research group in Potsdam. “It included specialists like Molo and Christine Siegert, who had 20 years of experience in studying permafrost thanks to their joint work with the USSR,” explains Anna Morgenstern.

The study of frozen soils became widespread in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century in accordance with the strategic decisions of Moscow. The policy of development rich in hydrocarbons and other natural resources Eastern and Northern regions could not be carried out without the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Be that as it may, for the implementation of this project, it was initially required to form an engineering science about the ubiquitous permafrost here.

In the late 1930s, the Permafrost Institute was established in Moscow. In 1960 he was moved to Yakutsk. This large East Siberian city also stands on frozen ground. Two underground galleries (at a depth of 4 and 12 meters) at the base of the institute give "direct" access to the permafrost. The sandy layers tell of geological history city, which was built on the alluvial deposits of the Lena.

Anthrax and hollows

Heavy doors allow you to keep the temperature below zero. “Thawing permafrost poses a threat to the planet, but on the scale of Yakutia, everything is still quite stable,” explains Mikhail Grigoriev, director of the institute. “At the same time, the consequences of melting are more noticeable in other regions, especially in Yamal.”

After abnormal warm summer In 2016, an anthrax epidemic began on the peninsula (the first case since 1941, according to the Moscow Institute of Epidemiology) due to the thawing of the permafrost in which the pathogen was located. In addition, the newspapers again started talking about the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region after the discovery of volumetric depressions. They, too, were the result of thawing permafrost. “The region is rich in gas. When the soil melts, it releases gas bubbles, which explain these explosions,” Mikhail Grigoriev believes.

At the same time, not a single case of this kind has yet been reported on Samoilov Island, Alaska or northern Canada. The global permafrost monitoring network collects data from more than 250 sites. Its goal is to "combine knowledge as well as validate new climate models," says Hugues Lantuit of AWI.

In addition, the study of alpine permafrost is now gaining momentum. Scheduled for June 2018, the European Permafrost Conference is due to report on this work, which has been actively developed in Switzerland but is still in its infancy in France.

Another source of concern is coastal erosion and its socio-economic consequences: a third of the entire coast in the world is in the permafrost zone. In the Laptev Sea and the Beaufort Sea (North America), coastal erosion can reach up to eight meters a year, forcing nearby villages to consider relocating their homes. On Samoilov Island, the coastal wooden hut is still in its place. But how long will she stay?