On the current state of the Kolka (Karmadon) problem and its causes

Abstract

In the full 17 years that have passed since the Karmadon disaster, the scientific community has not come to a consensus on the reasons for the sudden collapse of the Kolka glacier. In the conditions of the practical oblivion of the regular monitoring regime of the state of glaciers in the main glacial sources in the ridge of the Kazbek-Tepli-Ulpat peaks in the eastern part of the Central Caucasus, it is especially relevant to concentrate instrumental and desk studies to monitor the impact of the main endogenous and exogenous factors on the glaciers of the region, the presence of which in the preparation of the Karmadon event all researchers are unanimous. Among the many hypotheses of the sudden collapse of the Kolka glacier, the main are three concepts: the impact of collapsing suspended masses of ice, separation of the glacier by seismic impact and gas-dynamic outburst, which were examined in detail from different angles. The purpose of the paper is to substantiate the gas-dynamic explosive nature of the Kolka glacier outburst from its bed based on the analysis of the studies results of other natural, natural-technogenic and technogenic phenomena, characterized in one way or another by fundamentally similar features to this catastrophe. The method of theoretical justification of the impossibility of mechanical ablation of the glacier due to glacial processes, the logical denial of the reasons associated with the glacier itself, its water potential or collapsing masses of overhanging ice and abnormal climatic conditions is used. Along with the negation of glaciological factors, a methodology of analogies is used, which are considered explosive or explosion-like volcanic eruptions and their seismic accompaniment, volcanic tremor during eruptions. The theoretical denial of the glacial-exogenous cause of the glacier outburst and the theoretical model of the preparation, the course of the explosive outburst and the transit of the ice-stone mass make it possible to put forward as a main result for the first time the gas-dynamic factor of the endogenous impact on the glacier with pressure fluids generated by the cooling substrate of the Kazbek stratovolcano chamber. The gas-dynamic nature of the catastrophic pulsation of the Kolka glacier convincingly explains all the anomalous natural phenomena that appeared in 2002 in the region of the Kolka glacier and its adjacent territory at the stages of preparation, course and post-paroxysmal completion of the catastrophe, the relationship between them and their relationship with the catastrophe opens up great prospects for further study of the Kolka glacier and in the field of gas-dynamic research. The foregoing allows us to conclude that caution in recognition of such an extraordinary result by the scientific community is caused by an extremely rare manifestation of explosive gasdynamic emissions of glaciers (an extraordinary result was first voiced as a determining factor in the sudden ouburst of the Kolka glacier), but this is a matter of time.