GEOMORPHOLOGIC PROCESSES IN THE KOLA PENINSULA MOUNTAINS AND THE CLIMATE CHANGE

The article deals with the distribution and chronology of recent geomorphologic processes, mainly in the Khibiny tundras. New evidences about the respective relief transformation and the manifestation of both well known (water-snow flows) and «exotic» for the Kola Peninsula processes (landslides) are presented. The processes were typical for the whole second half of the Holocene, although there were periods of their activation and weakening. A main factors of their development is the climate change, therefore, the principal trends of fluctuations of air temperature and precipitation in the Kola Peninsula were analyzed. Over the past 100 years the air temperature changes were quasi-cyclic, with a distinct linear trend of increasing annual average air temperature at a rate of about 1oC over 100 years. This could be attributed to the changes in the atmospheric circulation - the duration of northern longitudinal circulation combined with southern one increases throughout the year. There is a positive linear trend in precipitation, i.e. a slight increase of moisture index of the territory. Since a geomorphologic system is very inert, it needs much longer climate changes than 30–50 year long warming-cooling cycles to manifest any transformation.

catastrophic natural processes, relief-forming processes, exogenous processes, watersnow flows, landslide, climate change, air temperature and atmospheric precipitation trends, the Kola Peninsula, the Khibiny mountains

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