... Professor Vasily Bogoyavlensky, who led the latest expedition, told The Siberian Times: 'I think that next year it will be full of water and it will turn completely into a lake; in 10-20 years it will be difficult to say what happened here. The parapet will be washed away with rains and melting snow, the banks will be covered with water.
'This large crater fills with water rather fast - in just two years, so we need to examine such objects quickly.'
The professor, deputy director of the Moscow-based Oil and Gas Research Institute, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: 'We can now say more confidently about the process that led to the formation of the famous Yamal crater B-1. It was combination of a thermokarst (a form of pre-glacial topography) process and the migration of gases from the depth'.
It was also created from a pingo, he believes, something that experts initially doubted.
'It was a pingo or bulgunnyakh (mounds with an ice core common for Arctic and sub-Arctic regions), and then, due to the Earth’s heat flow this pingo starts to thaw and its half melted ice core is filled with gas that originates from the depth through cracks and faults in the ground.
'We know for sure that there is a fissure in the ground under this spot, probably even two intersecting faults - gullies around the spot confirm this. Through the cracks, natural gas got into the melting ice core, filled it and the pingo erupted. It was also heated by a stream of warmth coming from the bowels of the earth through the cracks.'
It is believed methane gas was largely responsible, though readings taken by the latest expedition showed no abnormal gas levels at the site.
The process is different than usual, because 'normally pingos thaw and collapse, forming the craters and then lakes which is quite a normal process.
'Here we see that the pingo erupts due to the gas which fills its core. It's a very interesting process, which we have never observed before'. ...