As if we needed another ominous sign that the damage we’re doing to the planet is reaching an irreversible threshold, scientists say an actual “gateway to the underworld” is slowly collapsing.
Dire. Hollywood is jealous they didn’t write it into a script, I bet.
The Batagay megaslump, known as the “gateway to the underworld,” is a giant geological scar that’s widened by 35 million cubic feet a year since 2014.
It’s pumping out thousands of tons of carbon as it splits further and further apart.
The 1-kilometer-long slash is located in the Sakha Republic of Siberia.
The crack was little more than a gully in the 1960s, but as rising temperatures have thawed the permafrost in the area, it has ripped faster and faster.
It was first charted on satellite imagery in 1991.
And yes, climate change is to blame.
As the permafrost in the soil begins to thaw due to warming temperatures, debris has spread downhill toward the Batagay River floodplain. As the land slumps, more and more frozen soil is exposed, causing it to slump even more.
A new study, done at the Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Melnikov Permafrost Institute worked to make 3D geological modeling of the megaslump in an attempt to better understand it.
They found that the slump has moved almost 1.23 billion cubic feet of ground since the 1990s. Around 2/3 of the material was ground ice, and the remainder was permafrost sediments.
And it’s continuing to grow quickly.
The Batagay megaslump isn’t the only one its kind, either. One study found there are thousands of climate-triggered landslide slumps in a High Arctic environment.
The Earth is talking to us.
The people in charge need to start listening.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about why we should be worried about the leak in the bottom of the ocean.