Mar 10, 2023 04:19 PM
(This post was last modified: Mar 10, 2023 05:09 PM by C C.)
https://nautil.us/what-nuclear-war-means...8326305237
EXCERPT: . . . Now, using more-advanced climate models to simulate the effects of United States-Russia and India-Pakistan nuclear conflicts, Toon and colleagues, led by the Louisiana State University oceanographer Cheryl S. Harrison, have provided the first detailed look at the impacts of nuclear war on the ocean. Their findings, published last year in the journal AGU Advances, describe a planet transformed even more profoundly than earlier simulations suggested.
No matter who cracks open their arsenal first, the model begins with smoke. Even at the tame end of their scenarios, with the nations using about one-quarter of the 400 to 500 warheads they’re expected to accumulate within the next several years, an India-Pakistan nuclear war would generate nearly 20 times the amount of smoke produced by the catastrophic Australian bushfires of 2019 and 2020. Those released a whopping 0.9 teragrams (Tg), or 900,000 tons, of carbon soot—the largest recorded amount to ever enter the atmosphere.
At its worst, with charred cities pumping hot clouds into the sky, a conflict between the two countries could produce almost 47 Tg of smoke. And were the U.S. and Russia to engage, deploying roughly 100 bombs of equivalent power to the one dropped on Hiroshima, the estimated output would be a nearly incomprehensible 150 Tg of soot.
In all cases, the smoke spreads fast. Within a week or two, a layer of smoke hovers above the entire planet. There’s less sunlight; everything starts to get just a tad colder. In the U.S.-Russia scenario, Earth cools an average of 7 degrees Celsius in just a few months. The global temperature decrease persists for at least a decade. Because water retains its heat longer than air, the ocean’s surface doesn’t reach its coolest until three to four years after detonations end, when ocean surface temperatures fall by an average of 6 degrees Celsius worldwide.
In Body Image
The climate models paint a scenario that is roughly equivalent to a small asteroid hitting Earth. The one that eradicated the dinosaurs had many of the same effects, albeit to a larger degree. And, much like that infamous asteroid, a nuclear war causes ice to expand across much of Earth’s surface. Arctic sea ice doubles in thickness, and portions of the South China Sea and the Atlantic Ocean—predicted to cool by about 25 and 10 degrees Celsius respectively—could freeze as well.
Radical as those changes are, it’s what happens at depth that alters the ocean forever... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: . . . Now, using more-advanced climate models to simulate the effects of United States-Russia and India-Pakistan nuclear conflicts, Toon and colleagues, led by the Louisiana State University oceanographer Cheryl S. Harrison, have provided the first detailed look at the impacts of nuclear war on the ocean. Their findings, published last year in the journal AGU Advances, describe a planet transformed even more profoundly than earlier simulations suggested.
No matter who cracks open their arsenal first, the model begins with smoke. Even at the tame end of their scenarios, with the nations using about one-quarter of the 400 to 500 warheads they’re expected to accumulate within the next several years, an India-Pakistan nuclear war would generate nearly 20 times the amount of smoke produced by the catastrophic Australian bushfires of 2019 and 2020. Those released a whopping 0.9 teragrams (Tg), or 900,000 tons, of carbon soot—the largest recorded amount to ever enter the atmosphere.
At its worst, with charred cities pumping hot clouds into the sky, a conflict between the two countries could produce almost 47 Tg of smoke. And were the U.S. and Russia to engage, deploying roughly 100 bombs of equivalent power to the one dropped on Hiroshima, the estimated output would be a nearly incomprehensible 150 Tg of soot.
In all cases, the smoke spreads fast. Within a week or two, a layer of smoke hovers above the entire planet. There’s less sunlight; everything starts to get just a tad colder. In the U.S.-Russia scenario, Earth cools an average of 7 degrees Celsius in just a few months. The global temperature decrease persists for at least a decade. Because water retains its heat longer than air, the ocean’s surface doesn’t reach its coolest until three to four years after detonations end, when ocean surface temperatures fall by an average of 6 degrees Celsius worldwide.
In Body Image
The climate models paint a scenario that is roughly equivalent to a small asteroid hitting Earth. The one that eradicated the dinosaurs had many of the same effects, albeit to a larger degree. And, much like that infamous asteroid, a nuclear war causes ice to expand across much of Earth’s surface. Arctic sea ice doubles in thickness, and portions of the South China Sea and the Atlantic Ocean—predicted to cool by about 25 and 10 degrees Celsius respectively—could freeze as well.
Radical as those changes are, it’s what happens at depth that alters the ocean forever... (MORE - missing details)