Discover how scientists are trying to capture methane in this short from NOVA and PBS Terra: bit.ly/3HGAfP6

I lived in Anchorage in the 70s, and I recall local news reporting on permafrost thaw. The main complaint was the smell and the increased mosquito harvest. It was worrisome that the groundwater was thawing the permafrost and scientists we're studying it. I would say that this mega methane leakage is far greater than any methane produced by cattle around the world.

I remember learning about predictions of massive methane releases from melting permafrost a couple of decades ago. Why is Nova presenting this as a surprise to scientists? It's long been known that once methane starts pouring out of the permafrost would be a signal that the tipping point has been reached. Nova is making this sound as if it's a brand new idea. Does David H. Koch being one of Novas biggest sponsors have anything to do with that?

In the Amish ice House where food is stored one would put saw dust packed in with the ice the saw dust acted as a thermo blanket. The saw dust would absorb heat as the inside of the dust froze and acted like permafrost keeping the cubes of ice frozen longer. Saw dust a natural element is useful.

Incredible documentary. Thank you PBS I've been watching since I was a little kid!

I grew up on pbs, I enjoyed it so much and now it's why I enjoy documentaries!

Weird how we hate school and being educated as children… But as an adult I long for knowledge and discovery

Learned so much today. Thanks for sharing this on UKposts.

Our tiny southeast Texas town of Daisetta has been dealing with sinkholes since the 70s. In 2008, we were on world news when one the size of several football fields formed within a day across the street from our high-school. Another, roughly a quarter the size of the original, suddenly appeared next to it. Several of us, myself included, had reported hearing gunshot like sounds around the same time each day before it, and were mocked. They aren't mocking now. As the ground warmed each afternoon, you could hear small explosions without a clear origin. If it's happening here, where we are actively pumping salt water into the ground, why wouldn't it happen where the environment is more delicate?

I remember being 9 years old, poor, and only having access to PBS. Now I love science.

As an Alaskan I can confirm the environment is changing incredibly rapidly here. This was a fantastic documentary

the dramatic drum beats make it just that much better

Im not living in Alaska or in any place near that area but understanding this whole thing made me worry and sad about the future and the people living near that area.. I hope more people will/can watch this video to raise awareness. This is very informative and important, my kids are watching with me right now.. 🥺❤

I watched PBS as a child as well always loved this channel !! A BIG THANKS for staying around til now, don't you go anywhere😉🤩👽❤💯💯

If you do the research, the Arctic is situated on top of what used to be a tropical rain forest. I believe it was before the last pole shift. Seems to me what's happening now is that as the region is warming up, that whole area that was once lush with life (before being re-situated, I suppose) is now beginning to decompose. If there was as much life thriving there before it became polar territory as it seems, this "thaw" is just the beginning of what could turn out to be a frighteningly enormous problem.

I live in Fairbanks. I remember my dog walking in the ponds and releasing a trail of gas bubbles from the sediments. Back in the 80s I was lucky to get on a tour of the permafrost tunnel in Fox. Like the guide said in the video, the smell is unique, and it's amazing to see all the specimens thawing out of the ceiling and walls.

I'm confused as to why people think the climate would not change eventually and fast. There are so many ancient stories , seas crashing in, land collapsing into the waters, lands freezing over, jungles drying out and turning to desert , land splitting apart, lands becoming habitable, lands becoming inhabitable , islands appearing and others getting swallowe by the seas etc, it's how it's always been it's how it always will be, wether we are here or not

Extraordinarily interesting. Once again, Thank You, Nova. Keep up the great work!!

Yes indeed. I am from here in Kotzebue Alaska. Thanks to the scientific research on our area. We've always known that lake had some form of anomaly hole like structure way below the permafrost underneath the lakes. We have a lot going on, been doing this research all my life. This video tells a lot of whats happening here, and all over as well. #kotzebuealaska #thegallahornfamily

The explosion at 31:17 when the guy nearly gets set on fire was WILD! Great Job NOVA PBS!

Fantastic documentary from Nova again!! Thank you for the learning of our earth giving all incite to the truth around the world.this segment " Arctic sink holes!" Was an eye opener....❤❤it!!😊

Is there a way we can capture the methane as it's coming through the perma frost and use it as a commodity? Maybe using it in a way that the gases given off of how we use it will not damage the atmosphere.

Love this channel. It’s like how discovery channel used to be.

Living near the Arctic circle I've got my own little pond that is producing a small volume of gas in the late spring thaw. Suspected and probably methane, I've crudely collected and burned it at the source several times over the years. However the last two years I've tried to set the gas alight in my collector it's failed to ignite, actually snuffing out the torch I was using leading me to believe that the gas composition is changing to having greater CO2 levels than previous years. Spring thaw is coming soon and I'm anxious to see what kind of results I have this year. Just tickled not to not to be having the major conflagrations the Siberians are having... WOW.

Very interesting program. The problems with thawing in towns might be solved by the same process that is 'geo-thermal' heating in 'the south'. In the far north, the process would be used to keep the ground frozen. With a new foundation the holes fore the coils are drilled and the hardware installed that allow a 12v 'fan' to circulate the air from 30ft down to the top 10ft. Insulate the top, and you might not even need any 'pylons' as the frozen slab would be 'stable' as is. Having a 4ft space would be used as 'warm side' temps to a water tank and septic tanks could be located there, keeping them from freezing as well as making servicing easy. In theory, you could also freeze the roads, but that might be expensive compared to the gains. What might work is laying some train tracks on the road and have everyone switch so that is used. The 'town' could have its own 'electric street car' that is on call 24/7. Towers used for transmission lines use small ground mounts, a few of those in a village would eliminate 'power poles' as well as allow for easy expansion. Lakes in Canada and Russia could have a history that goes back to impacts a few billion years ago or as a sinkhole from that far back. That cone of dense material goes down to where magma is flowing under the crust. The Oceanic Crust map crust shows 40,000 miles of Oceanic Ridges that are spreading about the speed fingernails grow. Those outflows hug the bottom of the crust until they meet an outflow coming from the opposite direction. Both then begin to descend to replace the magma that is rising at the rifts. The Pacific Blob is said to have a 60K year cycle, one that would see ice-ages come and go. Ice may seem to cool the land, but after there is a 'sheet' the ice begins to act like a blanket that inhibits heat from escaping. Over time, that allows the magma to 'heat up' to the extent that lakes of water can form on the ice of Greenland's Glaciers. Areas that are melting can be aided by seeding the area by air with hemp. Air drops of 'chopped hemp' could also be done, as the goal is to fill up the void (road washout) with an insulating material that is also resistant to 'rotting'. Smaller blemished could have crews fo in when the hemp is mature and cut it and lay it in a pattern that compress into a 'mat'. Sidewalks in villages could be done the same way when going over areas that melt in the summer. Fabric in an existing road and then covered with a thin layer of gravel would prevent rutting and pot-holes, so would adapting travel by rail.

Thank you for this amazing Documentary. Most valuable and interesting.

I have been watching NOVA on PBS since I was a kid and I LOVE this show and is why I donate to PBS because I want my kids to enjoy the things I did as a child!

These methane bubbles occur in New Orleans Louisiana, USA area as well. Although they found some to be butane gas escaping from fractures in the natural salt mines where oil is stored pre-refining. Some have cause explosions and fires & evacuations - even of a permanent evacuation of an entire city. Accidental drilling into the wall of a salt mine can cause the escape of the butane gas. Sink holes, too...there are videos here on You Tube about it - whole trucks swallowed up by sinkholes.

Very nice awesome thank you for all you do and the recordings you put on they're beautiful keep up the good work😊

Its very interesting that native Alaskans have known about this for many years and this program presents it as a brand new mystery. And with the music building in the background as they list the amounts of change and the scary predictions they cause a panic.

IDEA : Maybe these arctic "sinkholes", which are actually burst-holes, are the result of the thawing permafrost turning back to liquid, which would not only re-start the underground decomposition process, but also weaken the upper ground so it can no longer contain the gas & liquid pressures below ?

PBS knows what we want to see.

I love this Documentary! Wow! Lesson learned!

Very nice awesome thank you for all you do and the recordings you put on they're beautiful keep up the good work

This is very concerning. Not only because methane is being released but because whatever bacteria and viruses are in that permafrost are waking up. We have no idea of what's being released and it's very possible that one or more of them are capable of causing diseases to which we have no immunity.

PBS makes some of the best docs out there! Thanks for the hard work ladies and gentlemen of PBS

em cám ơn chương trình đã chia sẻ video rất hay và bổ ích ❤❤

My undergrad is in environmental science and my immediate thought is how does this excess methane effecting the ground water and what would the large long term effect of that amount of methane leak be on the atmosphere 😳 this is as fascinating as it is frightening. Never heard of this before, loved learning about yet another mysterious wonder of earth 🥹🌎

Watching this makes things like "Don't Look Up" seem very extremely realistic instead of farce. I don't have the answer, but society is definitely going to have to change with the tides, so to speak.

Here's a theory, the tundra is warming, pockets of methane begin seeping to the surface, by chance lightning strikes the seeping spot and the exploding methane blows out, creating the raised rim and ejecta.

What about prehistoric viruses for which we have no immunity being released from the permafrost? That's truly terrifying.

Well, the back scatter effect has been bringing things up from way down around here for a long time, I’d say that the ice it’s buried in is a 100,000 years old. At least.

If they could get pipes to capture that...just TONS of energy potential!!!

I would like to thank PBS personally for over 25 years of learning. From "The Song that never ends" and Lambchop, I will always value this station for the beautiful free opportunity to learn. God Bless your station, and thank you to the educators helping us faithfully forge our way into the future.

So much to learn. It is amazing how life on earth works.

What kind of creatures would be found in this lake? Sorry, I don't know that much about Alaska. I am always shocked and impressed when people enter murky waters, it frightens me. Great video.

It was well-made. Great first exposure for those who don't know about methane release throughout the Arctic. BUT they did not give some key relevant facts, for example, they left viewers with the impression that the only Siberian methane holes/mounds are the less than a dozen that are in Yamal. They didn't mention that we know there are some 7,000 methane mounds throughout Siberia and that 400 are unexploded and swollen to the breaking point. Not completely forthcoming.

Essential info in this documentary. These are the questions that remain: 1. Have the areas around the Russian tundra craters been tested with VLF to assess the presence of other deep chimneys of melting tundra? 2. Is the carbon isotopic signature from the melting tundra different from the fossil methane? 3. Is satellite imagery being used to track the development of tundra lakes?

Great video. Very informative. Thank you!

I love hands on science,always a good time thanks for sharing Sara great work

Methane has been seeping out of water bodies here in Michigan my whole 55 years. Every pond I have ever fished in had methane bubbles coming up.

Nova, please forgive me for not thanking you earlier for your fine documentary. You truly go above and beyond. So well done. Thank you, again. You are in our hearts and minds.

Very good info, and well presented. Everyone should watch this. It should be required for all jr. high school students.

Thanks a lot, the film is very educational!

I have to agree with All Time. I'm in my 50's and I remember hearing about the melting permafrost when I was in high school. Why wasn't the "Big Deal" over melting permafrost made back then. As the years have gone by I have wondered if what I heard back then was real or conjecture since nothing more was real said. I have lots of questions now.

Another great PBS Nova documentary.

is the sedge at ~22:50 still alive, then? i can't imagine chlorophyll remaining green for 20,000 years. But if it's still alive, how did it access sunlight? or does the cold preserve the chlorophyll cells in a way the larger animals just weren't? I would be super grateful if anyone in the comments knows more about this than me. This is a really neat documentary. Definitely inspires me to learn and understand more about the world we live in.

The land bridges under water near Norway, Greenland, as well as the Bering strait have been sinking allowing more salt water into the Arctic Ocean, having a tremendous effect on the amount of sea ice that would form leading to less ice that protects Arctic coastlines and ice that would reflect more sunlight. Thus, leading to more warming in the Arctic. There's lots of natural phenomena that's changing the climate. Amazing documentary,wish this aspect was included in it bc it is major contributor to warmer weather.

We need to accept what our earth is and cooperate, instead of always fighting it... Sometimes you have to move or change!

This is the most amazing information I've ever seen on the internet very nice permafrost That's crazy

This one broke my heart. This planet is so gorgeously beautiful. And the civilization inhabiting it is so pitiful. The clock is ticking.

The question is not "Can the sinkholes add to global warming?", but, rather, "how much can they increase the speed and severity of global warming?"

I love this one, what an interesting natural puzzle!

Went to have a look at the Yamal peninsula and wow, what a hole-covered area! I figured round shapes would stand out in the landscape, but not here. Can't imagine a wetter landscape over such a massive land area.

I can imagine a lightning strike igniting a methane seep, or even detonating a mixture of air and methane. That might explain the blown-out craters in the Russian tundra.

They didn't mention that if polar ice melts, that decreases the earth's ability to reflect radiation from the sun back into space since that is what the ice does. That is an addition to the already alarming warning signs we are seeing.

Lived up there freezing and thaw seen boulders between steamboat and Hayden 60 foot around in the dark on the way to work in the road

These 'blow holes' look so perfectly round. I live in Florida where sinkholes are common. They never look like that. Of course, there is a difference in methane vs. limerock shifting.

There is no way i would explore that lake! One spark and all those bubbles turn into a nasty explosion and fire!

Scary documentary, but interesting and well presented.

There's no better documentary maker, than Nova/PBS. I've watched them for decades now, and it's always quality programming!

I wish there were better news! Really captivating and well done, though. Wish this had been available in about 2007. Very shareable. I, too, wish they had slipped in the point about the Arctic Ocean about to flip from a reflector to an absorber.

This shows me that this is a natural phenomenon. Our earth goes through cycles and shifts through time. When you look at our earth through the idea of millions of years, it is not that startling.

sounds to me that we need to stop drilling oil from other places and start using up the methane that is in the permafrost instead, unless we find a way to keep it locked into the ground. but it sounds to me that we get a larger burst of uncontrolled methane that will return into co2 over the 12 years timespan. if we speed up that process while still a problem to get rid of the co2 we avoid the big spike we would otherwise experience. Not sure if there is a other way to manage the problem since i dont expect we can revert the melting from happening

I have an old Alaskan oddities book from the 1960's that details these things in South West Alaska. It explains that the think they could be fresh meteor impact sights though no evidence of meteoritic material is present.

I recently read an article about how salt from the Atlantic Ocean was increasing the salinity of the Arctic Ocean, which has had a lower salt content than the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for millennia due to the presence of an underwater land barrier between Greenland and the Norwegian Island of Svalbard know as the Spitzbergen. This underwater land barrier, I understand, has been sinking and letting in more salt water into the Arctic Ocean and thus has cause increased salinity in the Arctic Ocean that makes sea ice more difficult to form resulting in what is called "dirty ice". This kind of ice doesn't reflect as much sun as the mostly freshwater sea ice that used to form primarily in the Arctic. This causes more sunlight to be absorbed and causes warming of the Arctic Ocean water that no doubt is contributing to the melting of the Arctic permafrost. I heard no discussion of this problem in the documentary. Did the contributing scientists not know about this phenomenon? Restoring the height of a sinking underwater land bridge seems like an impossible task meaning that the increase in Arctic Ocean salinity is probably an irreversible process that will lead to more permafrost melting and methane release from both permafrost organic matter and deep stores of fossil carbon. I don't think these processes are going to be reversed by humans. And shutting down fossil fuel use by humans to zero would have virtually no impact on what seems to be an inevitable increase in greenhouse gases. Perhaps we need to start adapting to these seemingly inevitable changes. Perhaps Antarctica, Canada, and Siberia will become tropical paradises again. I am not sure about what will happen to the rest of the planet. Will it all turn into a tropical paradise? Perhaps the amount or area of habitable human, plant, and animal land will expand rapidly in the near future. Would that be so bad? Another part of the global warming models that has been left out has been the role of cloud formation. Clouds cool the land and water beneath them. Perhaps this is another reason why models of global warming have been so far off.

great doco!

I wanted to know how tough the side of that smooth sinkhole was... kinda looked like rock... very beautiful :) but they didn't really elaborate on what it was made of that I could tell (they may have, I was working and listening at the same time - might have missed it).

Can we get back to planting a crap ton of trees like we did in the 90s for some reason. We can have gardens of any type on the roofs of most every building. Old lants might kill us but maybe enough new plants could save us. I heard that bamboo is great for clean air and it's very useful.

When I worked in Dead horse in the mid 70's there were miniature ponds as far as the eye could see in the permafrost. I didn't notice any change in the size or quantity of the ponds during my four year stay. It looked exactly like the ones shown on this show.

I would love to live in Utqiagvik, not sure what job I would do, but the cold and location are very appealing to me.

What amazes me every time I see stories like this is how amazed humans are about what the Earth does. Earth and nature are constantly changing and always will be. This means a lot of weird stuff for us. Nonetheless, Earth is just doing its thing, even if it boggles our mind because we think we're perfect beings in a perfect world. 😂

My question is, why is it that methane emissions haven't been added to climate models if we've known about it for a decade? Surely there is enough data to get a rough estimate. Not that it really matters, we're all toast anyway.

Although entitled "Arctic Sinkholes" very little explanation of them is made except we are told they are not sinkholes. Most of the video is about things other than the title topic.

"how fast it's going to happen, we don't know" Whenever they say that, it happens much faster than anyone predicted

Wouldn't a lightning strike ignite a methane source on the surface and potentially result in a large explosion?

I live at about 87.00 W 39.89 N which is a long way from the Arctic, but for two long years I lived on an island, whose name I never learned, above Canada and well inside the Arctic circle. I built a dome there with materials I found out and about that trapped methane and I used that gas for light and heat in my shelter. Now I live very rural. I have also built a dome here I have used to trap methane. I was going to use this dome for methane from compost, However, I found this dome traps methane and holds it at about 7psig with sufficient flow to run a methane driven electrical generator with enough output to heat, light, and air condition a 3200 sq ft residence and 2200 sq ft barn and work shop, with a methane forge. This is methane that simply seeps out of the earth beneath the dome. I believe this to be much more prevalent than most people know. This patch of land also has a 6 acre pond that bubbles up methane. Earth's crust is leaking methane everywhere. As for the climate change computer models, the predictions made using them have yet to come to fruition.

why show a nuclear plant when talking about green house gases at 26:51 ? those clouds are water vapor, that is how nuclear energy works, they use radioactive material to heat itself AND heat water so that the water vapor spins a turbine generator so we get electricity. the clouds are not dangerous, the vapor is not dangerous, the water used to spin the turbine and that is leaving the giant towers are not in direct contact with the radioactive fuel, so there is no contamination, there is a separate water used to cool the nuclear reactor which is radiated and is taken care of safely and cleanly WHILE NOT RELEASING GREEN HOUSE GASSES IN ITS PROCESS. only contamination produced from these power plants is the radiated material near the reactor which is very safely taken care of, extremely safely to be more accurate.

thanks for Asher knowing what one does not know about the world

It's not the temperature we need to be concerned with, it's the composition of the atmosphere. We can keep cool if it gets too hot, we have no options if the air is unbreathable.

NOVA!!! My other favorite PBS program, for decades now. Never disappoints.

hahaha i loved the jump back and pause after the flame came up

Thanks Nova

I'm 67 years old and as a teenager he used to tell me that all the oil and other things we keep pumping out of the ground must be leaving huge voids deep underground. He thought that sinkholes may be the cause and that it could also throw the Earth out of balance. It sounded crazy at the time but today I'm wondering if he wasn't on to something 50 years ago.

Best tv program I've seen in years 👌

Scientist agree humans caused the two degree temperature rise in the last 150 years but increased CO2 and methane from permafrost was not accounted for in current models. What other contributing factors are we failing to account for? I’m not sure how so many scientist can draw a conclusion with incomplete data. there are so many variables known and unknown that impact the planet’s temperature. I completely agree that we should strive for the smallest environmental footprint possible i just believe that contributing the two degree change to human activity at the very least a premature conclusion.

Nova really does a number again on this one. Also, scientists initially blamed this phenomenon for the Tonguska event in 1908, hardly a new idea.

Nova is great I remember watching a Nova documentary about the Aborigines of Australia and my young mind was blown. That was sometime in mid 90s and this show still packs a punch

Outstanding! I loved this! I did not know about some of the grasses and things that were green and frozen in the permafrost for about 40,000 years and that was WILD to see them in that permafrost cave... Very eye opening to how our world is not standalone, but an accumulation of the worlds of the past, and we are all interconnected with them. Wish everyone had to watch this for schools! This was not taught in schools other than as "oh the ice caps are melting! stop driving cars and making carbon dioxide emissions!" This should be required viewing for any class that has a substitute teacher one day.

Does the rate of melt per year relate to the age of that particular layer of permafrost?