Name: What's Causing Water to Bubble in the Arctic?
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A pilot flying over Esieh Lake, located on the lands of the Indigenous Inupiat people, spotted something unusual on its surface.

Scientists look for the source of large bubbles in an Arctic lake.

What's Causing Water to Bubble in the Arctic?

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A pilot flying over Esieh Lake, located on the lands of the Indigenous Inupiat people, spotted something unusual on its surface.

Scientists look for the source of large bubbles in an Arctic lake.

Planet Earth

What's Causing Water to Bubble in the Arctic?Published: February 15, 2022NARRATOR: Esieh Lake is located on the lands of the indigenous Inupiat people. The state is home to over 13,000 Inupiat people, whose traditional lands stretch across northern Alaska.One of the scientists on the team has special ties to this community.JANELLE ANAUSUK SHARP: My name is Janelle Sharpe. My Inupiaq name is Anausuk. My mom is originally from Kotzebue. My family is from this region, and so, this project is really special to me, because it’s kind of like me coming back to my roots.NARRATOR: In 2017, Sharp and other scientists asked the local community to help them identify unusual features in the wilderness. A pilot named Eric Sieh told them that while flying over the area, he’d spotted something unusual.JANELLE ANAUSUK SHARP: If you fly low enough, even from the air, you can see the bubbling.PHIL HANKE: It’s just mysterious. It looks like a Jacuzzi®. And so you get up to it and you can hear this “bloom bloom.”JANELLE ANAUSUK SHARP: Like the water is boiling around you.NARRATOR: On their first visit, the team wanted to investigate what’s causing the bubbles.JANELLE ANAUSUK SHARP: We took gas samples, and then those were sent to the lab for analysis, and they found that it is a super high amount of methane.NARRATOR: Methane leaks, known as seeps, have been found elsewhere in the Arctic, but they are usually much smaller. The team’s measurements reveal that Esieh Lake is belching out over 10 tons of methane, every day.TAYLOR SULLIVAN: This is the highest flux methane seep that humans have discovered in the Arctic. The amount of methane you see is staggering.NARRATOR: From the shore, it’s difficult to see where the methane is coming from, so the team decides to get closer to the source.TAYLOR SULLIVAN: Hypothermia is obviously the main danger. Second is me getting air. I’m very curious about what’s down there.NARRATOR: Sullivan finds that the lake is shallow, just a few feet deep. But then, he follows the lake floor towards the source of the bubbles.TAYLOR SULLIVAN: I was kicking really hard to stay down along the bottom, and I was moving my hands along it. And it went from this mushy lake bottom that was flat, flat, flat, and then it just dropped out.That gets deep so quickly. It’s like you’re on the bottom, on the bottom, bottom’s gone.NARRATOR: Sullivan finds the methane bubbles are streaming up from the hole in the lake floor.TAYLOR SULLIVAN: The bubbling, it sounded like seeping gas, as if it was even from a propane tank.PHIL HANKE: How did it go?Still going down!JANELLE ANAUSUK SHARP: Wow.NARRATOR: With the lake bottom too dark to see, the team deploys a sonar scan.Most of this bed is around three feet deep, but beneath the streams of bubbles, the ground abruptly falls away, at its deepest reaching 50 feet.Why does a lake floor, otherwise flat and shallow, contain such a massive hole?On the Yamal, scientists believe a methane leak blew out a huge crater. Esieh Lake is another sign, within the Arctic, that beneath the surface, methane is stirring.

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What's Causing Water to Bubble in the Arctic?

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