ИСТИНА

In many regions of the world climate change impact on frequency and magnitude of weather extremes and natural hazards. At the same time human societies became more vulnerable to hazards due to increasing land use activity and growing population. This is true for the Caucasus, highly glaciated mountains with altitude up to 5642 m asl., stretched in Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. During recent decades they registered rapid increase of June-September mean air temperature. It has resulted in predominantly negative glacier mass balance and accelerating glacier area loss, disappearing of ice apron and termini retreat overall in the Caucasus. Disappearing cryosphere impacts on downstream communities through changing runoff and various hazards including glacier related debris flows, ice-rock and snow avalanches. Overlaying of cryospheric change and weather extremes caused several situations without historical precedents in the region. We analyze major climate, cryosphere and weather-related disasters happened in the Caucasus since early 21st century, identify their triggers and assess their influence on local communities. In most of cases historical communities were less prone to local-scale hazards comparatively to modern communities, but regional cooling in 14th century was among triggers of state Alania decline.