Newly released drone footage confirms the massive permafrost crater in Siberia -the “gateway to the underworld” – is growing in size.
The Batagaika crater is a thermokarst depression in the East Siberian taiga, in the Sakha Republic in Russia. The crater is situated in one of the coldest regions in the world and is layered in permafrost.
The crater began to form after a forest was cleared in preparation for a road that was to be built in the region during the 1960s. The crater, known as the “gateway to the underworld” by locals, is named after the Batagaika River, a nearby tributary of the Yana River.
When Digital Journal first reported on the crater in 2017, the Batagaika depression had grown to about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) long and 282 feet (86 meters) deep. It continues growing at a rate of 33 feet (10 meters) annually, however, in warmer years its growth has accelerated by as much as 98 feet (30 meters) a year.
The “gateway to the underworld” today
New video images taken by a drone flown down into the crater by Ruptly.tv, show first-hand the vast scale of the phenomenon as of July 12, 2023, according to Science Alert.
Nikita Tananayev, the lead researcher at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk, says that while the crater may attract tourists, the slump’s expansion is “a sign of danger,” reports Reuters. “In the future, with increasing temperatures and with higher anthropogenic pressure, we will see more and more of those mega-slumps forming, until all the permafrost is gone.”
Today, the depression is roughly 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) in length and 100 meters (328 feet) deep. Now the crater continues to grow as the material at the bottom melts and more of the underlying permafrost is exposed to the air.
Locals in a village in Sakha have also taken note of the crater’s rapid growth. “(Two years ago the edge) was about 20-30 meters away from this path. And now, apparently, it is much closer,” local resident and crater explorer Erel Struchkov told Reuters
And it’s not just drone imagery that shows that the crater continues to expand. Over the years, satellite imagery has also confirmed that the megaslump has grown in size.
Scientists say Russia is warming at least 2.5 times faster than the rest of the world, melting the long-frozen tundra that covers about 65 percent of the country’s landmass and releasing greenhouse gases stored in the thawed soil.
