Arctic methane emissions permafrost thawing. Near the bottom of the first sinkhole, air contained unusually high concentrations of methane, according to tests conducted by the researchers. This hypothesis points to the destabilization of gas hydrates containing huge amounts of methane gas. According to researchers at Norway's Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate (CAGE), through a process called geothermal heat flux, the Siberian permafrost which extends to the seabed of the Kara Sea, a section of the Arctic Ocean between the Yamal Peninsula and Novaya Zemlya, is thawing. According to a CAGE researcher, Aleksei Portnov, Methane hydrate is leaking in an area of at least
Cape Baranov Cape Baranov Cape Baranov (; "Mys Baranova") is a headland in Severnaya Zemlya, Russia. The Laptev Sea shore of present-day Severnaya Zemlya was discovered by Boris Vilkitsky in 1913 during the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition on behalf of the Russian Hydrographic Service, but he was unaware that there was a strait west of the cape between what is now Bolshevik Island and the islands further north, for the straits are frozen most of the year, forming a compact whole. This cape was named during the 1930–1932 expedition to the archipelago led by Georgy Ushakov and Nikolay Urvantsev after Soviet scientist