Mysterious crater in Siberia caused by methane-related release?

[DemPGH]

Fascinating. The effect would be like a cork popping off a champagne bottle. Rising temperatures caused outgassing in the Earth, basically.

But it's fun to kind of work a champagne cork loose and then let the pressure blow the cork out and bounce it off the ceiling! If you have company, make sure you tell them you're about to do it, lol.

[DemPGH]

This is interesting:

http://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-siberian-crater-attributed-to-methane-1.15649

It's clearly some kind of outgassing with methane the likeliest explanation because of all the debris and dirt that aerial photos show around the hole(s). You'd need a vast amount of methane to cause environmental damage, so it's possible that a small hydrate caused this.