• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta June 29, 2022
London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty June 29, 2022
G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance June 29, 2022
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use June 26, 2022
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Climate News Network

‘Small’ nuclear war could bring global cooling

August 21, 2019
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

Hiroshima’s Peace Dome was one of very few buildings still standing after the 1945 bomb struck. Image: By Terence Starkey on Unsplash

Hiroshima’s Peace Dome was one of very few buildings still standing after the 1945 bomb struck. Image: By Terence Starkey on Unsplash

 

Smoke from Canadian forest fires was so vast it bore comparison with a nuclear bomb’s mushroom cloud – and the global cooling that might unleash.

LONDON, 21 August, 2019 − If a nuclear war should ever break out, any survivors could have to cope not just with the immediate effects of blast and radioactivity, but with climate mayhem as well: global cooling with unknowable consequences.

The wildfires in the Canadian province of British Columbia in the summer of 2017 were the worst the region had ever seen. They were so bad that the smoke from the sustained blaze rose 23 kms into the upper stratosphere and stayed there for eight months.

And that has given US scientists the chance once again to model the consequences of a nuclear winter after thermonuclear war.

“This process of injecting soot into the stratosphere and seeing it extend its lifetime by self-lofting was previously modelled as a consequence of nuclear winter in the case of an all-out war between the United States and Russia, in which smoke from burning cities would change the global climate,” said Alan Robock, an environmental scientist at Rutgers University.

“Even a relatively small nuclear war between India and Pakistan could cause climate change unprecedented in recorded human history, and global food crises.”

“The observed rapid plume, latitudinal spread, and photochemical reactions provided new insight into potential global climate impacts from nuclear war”

Professor Robock and colleagues report in the journal Science that they used computer simulations and satellite observations to test an old worry: what happens when black carbon or other obstructions get into the stratosphere. Sulphate aerosols discharged to stratospheric heights from volcanoes have been observed to lower global average temperatures.

The eruption of Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 blasted 20 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere and lowered global temperatures by around 0.5°C, and the same observations have prompted scientists to propose an untested and potentially dangerous solution to runaway global heating, by spraying aerosols into the upper atmosphere.

The unprecedented fires in British Columbia that began in July 2017 provided them with experimental evidence: the devastation was so bad that 40,000 people were evacuated from their homes and the provincial government declared a state of emergency that lasted 10 weeks. Altogether the fires destroyed 1.2 million hectares of forest and caused $564m worth of damage.

What interested the US scientists was the smoke. It formed a pyrocumulonimbus cloud larger than any ever observed before and rose 12 kilometres. There was hardly enough mass in the plume to cool the planet in any measurable way, but it had bulk enough to provide information on how the cloud dispersed and how it lingered.

The soot in the cloud absorbed solar radiation and the air around each particle became hotter, which made it rise even further. Within two months, it had reached 23kms. The stratosphere is above the rain clouds, so there was nothing to wash the soot down again. The stratosphere is also home to the jet stream, and high winds took the soot around the whole hemisphere.

Future unpredictable

And that gave Professor Robock and his colleagues the chance to test models of what might happen if, instead of forest fires, the smoke had come from cities reduced to ash by a thermonuclear exchange.

The smoke from British Columbia held 300,000 tonnes of soot. A nuclear war between India and Pakistan however could put 15 million tonnes into the upper atmosphere, and a war between the US and Russia could generate 150 million tonnes.

Nobody knows what then might happen. More than 30 years ago, US scientists raised the spectre of nuclear winter: a world in which sunlight was weakened, summers were cancelled, and harvests failed.

The hypothesis was, thankfully, never put to the test, and in any case was challenged by other scientists. The Canadian fires, themselves perhaps made more devastating by global warming, delivered some vital clues. The next step is to apply the evidence from 2017 to see whether, after a nuclear war, the much-feared enduring winter would follow.

“The observed rapid plume, latitudinal spread, and photochemical reactions provided new insight into potential global climate impacts from nuclear war,” the scientists write. − Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

stux / Pixabay
Air & Marine

Big Seven European Airlines Lag on Reducing Sky-High Emissions: Report

June 13, 2022
76
Ars Electronica/flickr
Solar

Unique ‘Smartflower’ Microgrid to Power Saskatchewan High School

June 13, 2022
154
http://midwestenergynews.com/2013/10/24/as-pipeline-concerns-mount-a-renewed-focus-on-the-great-lakes-enbridge-mackinac-line-5/
Pipelines / Rail Transport

Line 5 Closure Brings Negligible Rise in Gas Prices, Enbridge Consultant Finds

June 10, 2022
206

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

François GOGLINS/wikimedia commons

Corrosion Problem Shutters Half of France’s Nuclear Reactors

June 29, 2022
227
Keith Hirsche

Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta

June 29, 2022
411
Danielle Scott/flickr

Advocate Urges Ottawa to Intervene Before Ontario Builds Highway 413

June 29, 2022
130
David/flickr

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
1.2k
Number 10/flickr

G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance

June 29, 2022
146
London Eye UK England

London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 29, 2022
131

Recent Posts

AJEL / Pixabay

Windfall Tax on Food, Fossil, Pharma Giants Would Raise $490B to Solve ‘Catastrophic’ Food Crisis: Oxfam

June 29, 2022
58
futureatlas.com/flickr

Ottawa Demands Deeper Fuel Emissions Cuts, Offers Fossils a Double-Dip on Tax Breaks

June 29, 2022
78
Province of B.C./flickr

Comox Joins Municipalities Seeking Ban on New Gas Stations

June 29, 2022
78
/Piqsels

Refocus Agriculture Spending to Cut Emissions, Boost Productivity, OECD Urges Governments

June 29, 2022
29
Jimmy Emerson, DVM/flickr

Public Vigilance Key to Protecting Greenbelts for Climate Resilience, Report Finds

June 29, 2022
36
Miguel V/Wikimedia Commons

Forests Fall Short of Full Carbon Storage Potential, Study Finds

June 29, 2022
64
Next Post
Joshua Doubek/Wikipedia

Blockbuster News Investigation Reveals ‘Culture of Silence’ in Fossil Health and Safety Violations

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}