“Gas pressure increased until it was high enough to push away the overlaying layers in a powerful injection, forming the crater,” “href=”http://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-siberian-crater-attributed-to-methane-1.15649″>explained geochemist Hans-Wolfgang Hubberten of Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute.

The other two craters have diameters of 45 feet and 13 feet. And while the pockmarked peninsula poses a particular risk to local people, especially considering that industrial plants have been erected on the frozen land that is now melting away, the global community will be affected as well.

Despite the danger of investigating this “spooky” unstable landmass, archaeologist Andrei Plekhanov from the Scientific Center of Arctic Studies in Salekhard, Russia reported in a recent Nature article that the air at the bottom of the crater consists of up to 9.6 percent methane – compared to the standard 0.000179 percent.

Related: Giant plumes of gurgling methane could fast-track planetary warming

This is worrisome because methane is far more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere – the one atmosphere that everyone on planet Earth shares.

“Pound for pound, the comparative impact of [methane gas] on climate change is over 20 times greater than [carbon dioxide] over a 100-year period,” the Environmental Protection Agency reported.

NIMBYism refers to the idea that as long as something bad (pollution, mining, social injustice) is taking place anywhere other than my back yard, it’s not my problem. But the thawing permafrost and subsequent release of methane bombs is everyone’s problem.

via How Siberia’s methane craters affect the whole planet | Green Prophet.