Natural and technogenic catastrophic blowouts and gas explosions in the Arctic and other regions (onshore and offshore)

Abstract

The authors created the geoinformation system "The Arctic and World Ocean" (GIS "AWO") with a huge amount of constantly updated geospatial data, allowing a comprehensive analysis of various natural and man-made phenomenon directly or indirectly related to the degassing of the Earth. In the Arctic, a large amount of expeditionary work has been carried out with a wide range of geological and geophysical methods, which is analyzed in conjunction with remote sensing data from space and using unmanned aerial vehicles. This made it possible to obtain fundamentally new information about the gas-dynamic mechanisms of dangerous processes in the permafrost, including catastrophic gas blowouts and explosions with the formation of giant craters, and large mud volcanic structures. In total in the north of Western Siberia about 18.5 thousand potentially dangerous objects were identified, including 4.5 thousand intensive gas blowout zones on the bottoms of thermokarst lakes, as a result of which underwater craters-pockmarks are formed. This gave possibility to identify the most dangerous gas-explosive zones in the north of Western Siberia, mainly located in the eastern part of the Yamal peninsula. Taking into account previously discovered mud volcanoes on the land of Alaska, Greenland and Iceland, as well as on the bottom of the Beaufort, Kara and Norwegian seas, it can be argued that there is a Circum-Arctic mud volcanic province.