Crater in Russia growing larger due to permafrost thawing

The Batagaika Crater in Russia is the largest crater in the world created by climate change. And the crater is only getting bigger, experts say.

Heat records are being broken worldwide, and one region experiencing extreme temperature changes is Siberia. Last spring it was unusually warm there, with temperatures up to ten degrees higher than normal in May. In summer, the temperature rose to a record high of 38 degrees, according to figures from the European research institute Copernicus.

Gate to hell

The Arctic permafrost, frozen soil that is full of carbon, is thawing due to global warming and this changes the landscape. A crater was formed in Eastern Siberia in the late 1960s because the thawed soil sank down.

The crater is now 100 meters deep and has a length of over a kilometer. The layers that become visible give researchers a picture of what the world looked like in the past.

From the crater, fossils of mammoths and other prehistoric animals emerge:

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