Violent fire broke out when scientists placed a small igniter near a hole punched in the surface of glacial lake Esieh.
Professor Katey Walter Anthony of the University of Alaska has released videos and photos of her amazing experiment at Lake Esieh – a year-round frozen lake in Alaska (USA), in the very near North Pole.
A scientist punches a hole in the middle of an icy lake, another person holds a match next to him – (photo cut from clip).
Many people are familiar with the image of explorers struggling to maintain a fire in the frozen Arctic. However, in today’s Lake Esieh, a small spark can be catastrophic, creating a large fire.
The ice just broke, the lake burned fiercely – (photo cut from the clip).
The fire is getting stronger – (photo cut from clip).
It was caused by a strange eruption of methane gas from beneath the lake bed , a flammable marsh gas. According to Professor Katey Walter Anthony, in the area there have appeared many ice craters that are constantly bubbling with methane.
Not only in the glacial lake Esieh, scientists around the world are concerned about similar methane releases in other icy regions, as the earth heats up due to climate change and ice melts.
An estimated 1.5 trillion tons of carbon is stored beneath permafrost, a remnant of ancient organic matter throughout billions of years of earth’s history, locked by nature under the ice. If the ice melts, the “mummies” below will quickly be decomposed by bacteria, releasing methane, a gas 23 times more destructive than CO 2 and can cause global catastrophe.
This phenomenon has been referred to by a multinational research group led by American geneticist George Church as “methane time bombs”. This group of scientists is famous for their plan to reincarnate mammoths. According to them, large mammals such as mammoths in the Arctic are needed for the snow and ice to be compressed and kept alive, thereby preventing the “methane time bomb” from causing disaster.
The team of scientists led by George Church said that if the carbon beneath the permafrost were released, they would produce methane and CO2 emissions equivalent to burning 2.5 times all of the forests on Earth. world.