WHAT do three enormous craters in the Siberian wastelands have to do with a terrified American climate scientist? Methane. And that’s something to scare us all.

The end of the world could be starting right now — in a frozen Siberian wasteland known as Yamal. It translates as “The End of the Land”.

The first mysterious crater was spotted by oil workers earlier this month. It was an 80m wide cavern that reached deep into the earth.

Since then, the Siberian Times reports goatherds have found a further two enormous vents in the ground.

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Russian researchers have returned from their investigation of the first find and taken water and soil samples to help resolve how the hole was formed.

Some say aliens. Some say they’re “hellmouths” — gateways to the undead.

But scientists already have a pretty good idea.

Explosive vents of vast quantities of methane gas.

Now a new, ominous, name could be attached to them: Dragon’s mouths.

Here’s where a blog posted by American professor in glaciology Dr Jason Box at the weekend comes in: “The dragon breath hypothesis has me losing sleep.”

If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're f'd. — Jason Box (@climate_ice) July 29, 2014

media_camera Dragon’s mouth ... a crater recently discovered in the Yamal Peninsula, in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Russian scientists said that they believe the 60-metre wide crater could be the result of changing temperatures in the region.

THE DRAGON’S BURP

Dr Box highlights signs of alarmingly huge spikes of methane being released into the atmosphere above Siberia.

It’s what that means which has him alarmed.

He’s not mincing his words.

He’s issued a no-holds barred call to action.

“This is an all hands on deck moment,” he writes. “We’re in the age of consequences.”

And he has the “WTF” results from atmospheric measurements to back him up.

media_camera Siberian anomaly ... an incredibly high spike in methane reading recorded in 2013.

Siberia has a single ground-based climate observing station, at a place called Tiksi.

But the numbers coming out of the remote research post are startling — and they’re backed up by similar stations in Alaska and Canada.

“I can tell you (these are) really high end,” Dr Box writes.

It’s the erratic, but enormous, spikes in methane readings coming from Tiksi — which Dr Box ominously calls “dragon breaths” — that may be tied to the enormous blow holes now appearing in Siberia’s desolate landscape.

He’d much rather the “dragon” remains dormant.

media_camera Rising trend ... the “dragon’s breath” methane spikes have been recorded eight times in the past 22 years.

EMPTYING AN ANCIENT CARBON DUMP

Siberia’s Yamal region contains some of Russia’s largest gas reserves. It’s little coincidence that the first vent hole appeared about 40km from the nation’s largest gas field — Bovanenkovo.

Since then another crater has been identified nearby. This one is smaller: Some 15m in diameter. Locals first found it in September last year, but it has only now come to the attention of authorities. A third — this time only 4m wide — was found several hundred kilometres away on the Taymyr Peninsula.

Russian scientists examining the first blowhole found it to be 60-80m wide and some 70m deep. It runs into the permafrost of ice and mud. There is an icy lake at its bottom.

media_camera Earth-shattering ... Andrei Plekhanov, a senior researcher at the Scientific Research Center of the Arctic, stands at a crater, discovered recently in the Yamal Peninsula, in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Plekhanov said 80 per cent of the crater appeared to be made up of ice and that there were no traces of an explosion, eliminating the possibility that a meteorite had struck the region.

“We can be certain in saying that the crater appeared relatively recently, perhaps a year or two ago; so it is a recent formation, we are not talking about dozen years ago,” said Andrey Plekhanov, Senior Researcher at the Russian Scientific Centre of Arctic Research.

Could it be linked to climate change?

SIBERIAN MYSTERY: What formed this massive hole in the ground?

“Well, we have to continue our research to answer this question,” he said. “Two previous summers — years 2012 and 2013 were relatively hot for Yamal, perhaps this has somehow influenced the formation of the crater.”

media_camera Numbers of the beast ... This picture, provided to The Siberian Times by local residents, shows another recently found funnel in the Siberian tundra.

Mikhail Lapsui, a deputy of Siberia’s regional parliament, inspected the second blowhole site.

“I flew by helicopter to inspect this funnel on Saturday, 19 July. Its diameter is about 15 metres. There is also ground outside, as if it was thrown as a result of an underground explosion.”

Methane.

It’s the lasting remains of an event which happened some 50 million years ago. An outbreak of a tiny green weed transformed the Earth from a virtually lifeless greenhouse by sucking the carbon out of the air and pumping oxygen back into it.

media_camera From zero to hero? ... The Azolla water fern reversed the effects of climate change 50 million years ago. Now all its hard work threatens to be undone with the melting of Siberian permafrost.

It was a process which took millions of years to create the world as we know it.

But the methane left trapped under the Arctic permafrost is a ticking time bomb — set to send the world into a mass extinction and set the climate clock back by millennia.

“We have been too long on a trajectory pointed at an unmanageable climate calamity; runaway climate heating,” Dr Box writes.

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“If we don’t get atmospheric carbon down and cool the Arctic, the climate physics and recent observations tell me we will probably trigger the release of these vast carbon stores, dooming our kids’ to a hothouse Earth. That’s a tough statement to read when your worry budget is already full as most of ours is.”

media_camera Altered landscape ... Three deep vent holes have now been found blasted into the desolate permafrost of Siberia.

GROWING ALARM

Dr Box says the issue of Arctic permafrost feedback on our warming climate was raised at the world’s largest meeting of scientists, the AGU, late last year. The take-home message was “we just can’t say much yet,” he said.

“That was then …”

He says he’s since been following blogs by other leading climate scientists and putting it all together.

“Their messaging is alarming, connecting dots between methane maps they generate using IASI data and a number of rapidly changing Arctic climate elements: declining sea ice area, duration, volume; increasing air and sea surface temperature; wildfires.”

Siberia breaks records for Arctic heat in a new sign of changing weather patterns http://t.co/0HIODobDwO — Jason Box (@climate_ice) July 28, 2014

One account is eerily similar to that of Siberia’s “dragon mouths”.

Bubbles of methane have been observed rising to the Arctic Ocean’s surface since as early as 2011.

“That’s damn scary,” Dr Box writes.

He fears the genie may be escaping from the bottle.

“Atmospheric methane release is a much bigger problem than atmospheric carbon dioxide release, since methane is ~20 times more powerful greenhouse gas,” he writes.

It’s a sign of a worst-case scenario cascading environmental collapse.

The loss of the reflective bright white Arctic ice itself contributes to warming as the ocean left behind absorbs more heat.

Scientists baffled by giant crater A giant crater has appeared in the gas-rich area of Bovanenkovo, Siberia. Authorities are racing to the region to investigate. Courtesy Bulka/YouTube

This warm water further destabilises the ice sheet and allows currents to form which “unlock” the methane trapped in the cold, shallow seas.

This methane erupts into the air — rapidly surpassing the effects of our own pollutants. At this point, there is nothing left humanity can do.

“What’s the take home message, if you ask me?” Dr Box writes.

EARTH 2.0: Can we find it fast enough?

“Because elevated atmospheric carbon from fossil fuel burning is the trigger mechanism poking the climate dragon. The trajectory we’re on is to awaken a runaway climate heating that will ravage global agricultural systems leading to mass famine, conflict. Sea level rise will be a small problem by comparison. We simply MUST lower atmospheric carbon emissions.

“There are still questions, of course, but the precautionary principle makes clear we have to keep this dragon in the ground.”

Originally published as Will these blowholes end the world?