According to Vasily Bogoyavlensky, the deputy director for science at the Institute of Oil and Gas Problems of RAS, explosions in the Arctic will continue, but their timing and location cannot be predicted with certainty. As with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, predictions can only be made through continuous monitoring of individual formations, based on the changes in their behavior detected by instruments. And even then, this would only be a prediction of a fairly long-term probability of an event.
“We have been studying explosions in the Arctic for 10 years and know almost everything about them. The rapid growth of a mound is the key indicator of an impending eruption. Of the two mounds we studied this year one exploded on August 30. Its growth rate was unusually high, more than 50 centimeters per year. Mounds can be monitored from space. We are currently looking at potentially dangerous spots in the Bovanenkovskoye field in Yamal,” Bogoyavlensky said.
Nevertheless, he added that the simulation using the new apparatus will be useful for understanding how and at what temperature various soils start to leak gas.
The coordinator of the industrial greening program of the Biodiversity Conservation Center Igor Shkradyuk said that while individual explosive events cannot be predicted, the increase in their intensity can be.
“Methane, which is produced by the fermentation of biomass, has a close cousin, the marsh gas, which sometimes bubbles up and catches fire. Trapped in the permafrost, methane has accumulated underground for tens of thousands of years. As the permafrost thaws, the gas escapes,” said Shkraduyk, who also serves as an expert at the International Socio-Ecological Union.
There are six billion tons of methane underground, hundreds of times more than in the atmosphere. As the ice thaws, emissions occur much more often than a decade ago, and the trend will continue. There are about 2,000 seeps at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, and many more on polar islands. Their explosions can be compared to the detonation of a 10-ton TNT bomb, Shkradyuk added.
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This story by Denis Gritsenko was originally published in Russian by Izvestia. The crater photos have been added courtesy of Leading Research Scientist Evgeny Chuvilin of Skoltech Petroleum.
The study reported in this story came out in the journal Cold Regions Science and Technology and was supported by Russian Science Foundation grant Nos. 22-17-00112 and 22-67-00025.