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Scientists were baffled by the mysterious craters that appeared in northern Russia earlier this month.

Researchers now believe these craters may have been created by a build-up of methane over centuries that then erupting out of the thawing ground.

But strange, unexplained holes are just the beginning of what could be a series of mysterious happenings on the planet – all caused by melting Arctic ice, scientists believe.

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Pictured are 'drunken forests' in Fairbanks, Alaska. This phenomenon is caused by the permafrost melting beneath the trees causing solid soil to turn to mud; the result is that they lean to one side

According to a report by David Biello in Scientific American, temperatures across the Arctic are warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of the globe.

'At some point, we might get into a state of permafrost that is not comparable to what we know for 100 years or so, some new processes that never happened before,' geologist Guido Grosse of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research told Mr Biello.

A similar process is taking place in the melting regions of the Arctic where lakes, known as thermokarsts, which are lakes that break down plant material into methane.

This methane can then escape out of the lake or the ground, and once lit, could set ice on fire.

Permafrost is also leading to 'drunken trees' as the firm soil slowly transforms into mud causing the plants that grow in them to lean to one side.

An ecologist ignites a large methane bubble that was trapped by the autumn freeze. One of the largest concerns about thawing permafrost is the sudden release of methane from the Arctic

Scientists were baffled by the mysterious craters that appeared in northern Russia earlier this month. Researchers now believe they were created by a build-up of methane over centuries

Russian expedition looks into mysterious hole in Siberia

Some trees survive their soil eroding and continue to grow. Others collapse or drown as the subterranean ice melts.

Nasa claims that arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon - an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 billion tonnes of it. 

That's about half of all the estimated organic carbon stored in Earth's soils. In comparison, about 350 billion tonnes of carbon have been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities.

Most of the Arctic's sequestered carbon is located in thaw-vulnerable topsoils within 3 meters of the surface.

'Permafrost soils are warming even faster than Arctic air temperatures - as much as 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius in just the past 30 years,' said Nasa's Charles Miller.

'As heat from Earth's surface penetrates into permafrost, it threatens to mobilise these organic carbon reservoirs and release them into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, upsetting the Arctic's carbon balance and greatly exacerbating global warming.'

But separate research earlier this week suggested that some Arctic lakes store more greenhouse gases than they emit into the atmosphere.

This counters a widely-held scientific view that thawing permafrost accelerates atmospheric warming.

The study shows that permafrost rich in organic material will see the growth of mosses and other plants flourish, leading to greater amounts of carbon absorption.

Supported by the National Science Foundation, the study was published this week in the journal Nature and focused on thermokarst lakes.

A study says ice-rich lakes in Alaska and Siberia are cooling the atmosphere. The research challenges the widely-held view that thawing lakes cause warming. Found in the Arctic and cold mountain regions, thermokarst lakes (shown) occur when permafrost thaws and creates surface depressions that fill with water

Learn more about melting permafrost and Arctic thermokarst