Emily Chan
The thawing of the permafrost also releases dangerous greenhouse gases into the air that had previously been trapped beneath the frozen ground.
“As the climate warms—I think there’s no shadow of a doubt it will warm—we will get increasing thaw of the permafrost and…there will be more slumps and more gullying, more erosion of the land surface,” said Professor Julian Morton, a geologist at the University of Sussex who led a study of the megaslump in 2017.
The release of greenhouse gases, particularly methane, leads to more warming and causes the permafrost to melt even more.
It’s why megaslumps like the Batagay crater pose a major threat to our planet’s climate. The treacherous landscape surrounding the crater is also hazardous to the locals.
The one plus side of the exposed permafrost is that researchers can study it to help them understand what past climates were like. Furthermore, the gateway offers them a glimpse into ancient plant and animal life.
Old tree stumps protrude from the ground. The decaying remains of long-dead mammoths and horses can be seen as well.
For example, in 2018, researchers discovered a preserved 42,000-year-old horse from the Pleistocene era.
