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
Marat Fjord Marat Fjord Marat Fjord (, "Fiord Marata"), is a fjord in Severnaya Zemlya, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. This fjord is blocked by ice most of the year. Although the shore of the island further north had been visited by Boris Vilkitsky's Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition in 1913, Vilkitsky surveyed the eastern shores of what is now known as Severnaya Zemlya in a fragmentary way —he did not explore the Shokalsky Strait and assumed that the whole of Severnaya Zemlya was one single landmass. This fjord was first surveyed and put in the map at the time of the 1931 expedition led