Gas emission crater

Summary

A gas emissions crater or GEC is a crater that is left by an explosion that is believed to be caused by an overheated buildup of gas stuck below a layer of permafrost. The gas is primarily methane and is generally believed by experts to have seeped up from large underground reserves toward the Earth's surface "through some kind of geological fault," getting trapped when they reach the bottom of the permafrost. First known to have occurred in 2013, they are occurring solely in Siberia, where there are large stores of natural gas below a melting surface layer of permafrost. They are believed to be a byproduct of global climate change, since the warming of Siberia's climate weakens the permafrost enough to allow a sub-surface methane buildup to cause an outburst. The release of this previously trapped methane into the atmosphere is also likely to increase the speed of global climate change.