Abstract. We use a modern climate model and new estimates of smoke generated by fires in contemporary cities to calculate the response of the climate system to a regional nuclear war between emerging third world nuclear powers using 100 Hiroshima-size bombs (less than 0.03% of the explosive yield of the current global nuclear arsenal) on cities in the subtropics. We find significant cooling and reductions of precipitation lasting years, which would impact the global food supply. The climate changes are large and longlasting because the fuel loadings in modern cities are quite high and the subtropical solar insolation heats the resulting smoke cloud and lofts it into the high stratosphere, where removal mechanisms are slow. While the climate changes are less dramatic than found in previous "nuclear winter" simulations of a massive nuclear exchange between the superpowers, because less smoke is emitted, the changes are more long-lasting because the older models did not adequately represent the stratospheric plume rise.

Abstract. We use a modern climate model and new estimates of smoke generated by fires in contemporary cities to calculate the response of the climate system to a regional nuclear war between emerging third world nuclear powers using 100 Hiroshima-size bombs (less than 0.03% of the explosive yield of the current global nuclear arsenal) on cities in the subtropics. We find significant cooling and reductions of precipitation lasting years, which would impact the global food supply. The climate changes are large and long-lasting because the fuel loadings in modern cities are quite high and the subtropical solar insolation heats the resulting smoke cloud and lofts it into the high stratosphere, where removal mechanisms are slow. While the climate changes are less dramatic than found in previous "nuclear winter'' simulations of a massive nuclear exchange between the superpowers, because less smoke is emitted, the changes are more long-lasting because the older models did not adequately represent the stratospheric plume rise.

The latest understanding of nuclear winter is reviewed. Considerable progress has been made in quantifying the production and injection of soot by large-scale fires, the regional and global atmospheric dispersion of the soot, and the resulting physical, environmental, and climatic perturbations. New information has been obtained from laboratory studies, field experiments, and numerical modeling on a variety of scales (plume, mesoscale, and global). For the most likely soot injections from a full-scale nuclear exchange, three-dimensional climate simulations yield midsummer land temperature decreases that average 10° to 20°C in northern mid-latitudes, with local cooling as large as 35°C, and subfreezing summer temperatures in some regions. Anomalous atmospheric circulations caused by solar heating of soot is found to stabilize the upper atmosphere against overturning, thus increasing the soot lifetime, and to accelerate interhemispheric transport, leading to persistent effects in the Southern Hemisphere. Serious new environmental problems associated with soot injection have been identified, including disruption of monsoon precipitation and severe depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer in the Northern Hemisphere. The basic physics of nuclear winter has been reaffirmed through several authoritative international technical assessments and numerous individual scientific investigations. Remaining areas of uncertainty and research priorities are discussed in view of the latest findings.

No abstract

No abstract