Impacts of a nuclear war in South Asia on soybean and maize production in the Midwest United States

Özdoğan, Mutlu; Robock, Alan; Kucharik, Christopher J.

doi:10.1007/s10584-012-0518-1

Cited by 33 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Weather-related shocks are especially important because of crop sensitivity to weather extremes [7], including high [8] and low [9] temperatures, droughts [10], and floods [11]. Beyond these weather-related shocks, crop pests and pathogens [12,13], regional nuclear wars [14][15][16], agroterrorism [17], and epidemics [18] (including the ongoing Ebola outbreak) all represent potential future disruptions to the global food system. Considering that society has been largely ineffective in coping with recent shocks [19], efforts focused on enhancing resilience in the global food system to such disruptions are critically needed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the evolving fragility of the global food system

Puma

Bose

Chon³

et al. 2015

Environ. Res. Lett.

311

283

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The world food crisis in 2008 highlighted the susceptibility of the global food system to price shocks. Here we use annual staple food production and trade data from 1992-2009 to analyse the changing properties of the global food system. Over the 18 year study period, we show that the global food system is relatively homogeneous (85% of countries have low or marginal food self-sufficiency) and increases in complexity, with the number of global wheat and rice trade connections doubling and trade flows increasing by 42 and 90%, respectively. The increased connectivity and flows within these global trade networks suggest that the global food system is vulnerable to systemic disruptions, especially considering the tendency for exporting countries to switch to non-exporting states during times of food scarcity in the global markets. To test this hypothesis, we superimpose continental-scale disruptions on the wheat and rice trade networks. We find greater absolute reductions in global wheat and rice exports along with larger losses in network connectivity as the networks evolve due to disruptions in European wheat and Asian rice production. Importantly, our findings indicate that least developed countries suffer greater import losses in more connected networks through their increased dependence on imports for staple foods (due to these large-scale disturbances): mean (median) wheat losses as percentages of staple food supply are 8.9% (3.8%) for 1992-1996, increasing to 11% (5.7%) for 2005-2009. Over the same intervals, rice losses increase from 8.2% (2.2%) to 14% (5.2%). Our work indicates that policy efforts should focus on balancing the efficiency of international trade (and its associated specialization) with increased resilience of domestic production and global demand diversity.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the evolving fragility of the global food system

Puma

Bose

Chon³

et al. 2015

Environ. Res. Lett.

311

283

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Using a GCM, Robock et al [2007] estimated that such a BC injection reduces the global-average surface short-wave radiation by a maximum of about 16 W m −2 (after about 5 months) and decreases the global mean surface temperature by 1.3 ∘ C. The BC injection also modifies the precipitation associated with the Asian summer monsoon. All changes have devastating impacts on the agriculture productivity in regions far from the conflict [Toon et al, 2007b;Özdogan et al, 2013;Xia and Robock, 2013;Mills et al, 2014;Xia et al, 2015].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate effects of a hypothetical regional nuclear war: Sensitivity to emission duration and particle composition

et al. 2016

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Here, we use a coupled atmospheric-ocean-aerosol model to investigate the plume development and climate effects of the smoke generated by fires following a regional nuclear war between emerging third-world nuclear powers. We simulate a standard scenario where 5 Tg of black carbon (BC) is emitted over 1 day in the upper troposphere-lower stratosphere. However, it is likely that the emissions from the fires ignited by bomb detonations include a substantial amount of particulate organic matter (POM) and that they last more than 1 day. We therefore test the sensitivity of the aerosol plume and climate system to the BC/POM ratio (1:3, 1:9) and to the emission length (1 day, 1 week, 1 month). We find that in general, an emission length of 1 month substantially reduces the cooling compared to the 1-day case, whereas taking into account POM emissions notably increases the cooling and the reduction of precipitation associated with the nuclear war during the first year following the detonation. Accounting for POM emissions increases the particle size in the short-emission-length scenarios (1 day/1 week), reducing the residence time of the injected particle. While the initial cooling is more intense when including POM emission, the long-lasting effects, while still large, may be less extreme compared to the BC-only case. Our study highlights that the emission altitude reached by the plume is sensitive to both the particle type emitted by the fires and the emission duration. Consequently, the climate effects of a nuclear war are strongly dependent on these parameters.

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“…Recent studies use modern climate and crop models to examine the effects for a hypothetical India–Pakistan nuclear war scenario with 100 weapons (50 per side) each of 15 kilotons yield. The studies find agriculture declines in the range of approximately 2–50% depending on the crop and location (Özdoğan, Robock, & Kucharik, ; Xia, Robock, Mills, Stenke, & Helfand, ). Another study compares the crop data to existing poverty and malnourishment and estimates that the crop declines could threaten starvation for 2 billion people (Helfand, ).…”

Section: Risk Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Risk–Risk Tradeoff Analysis of Nuclear Explosives for Asteroid Deflection

Baum¹

2019

Risk Analysis

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To prevent catastrophic asteroid–Earth collisions, it has been proposed to use nuclear explosives to deflect away earthbound asteroids. However, this policy of nuclear deflection could inadvertently increase the risk of nuclear war and other violent conflict. This article conducts risk–risk tradeoff analysis to assess whether nuclear deflection results in a net increase or decrease in risk. Assuming nonnuclear deflection options are also used, nuclear deflection may only be needed for the largest and most imminent asteroid collisions. These are low‐frequency, high‐severity events. The effect of nuclear deflection on violent conflict risk is more ambiguous due to the complex and dynamic social factors at play. Indeed, it is not clear whether nuclear deflection would cause a net increase or decrease in violent conflict risk. Similarly, this article cannot reach a precise conclusion on the overall risk–risk tradeoff. The value of this article comes less from specific quantitative conclusions and more from providing an analytical framework and a better overall understanding of the policy decision. The article demonstrates the importance of integrated analysis of global risks and the policies to address them, as well as the challenge of quantitative evaluation of complex social processes such as violent conflict.

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Impacts of a nuclear war in South Asia on soybean and maize production in the Midwest United States

Cited by 33 publications

References 30 publications

Assessing the evolving fragility of the global food system

Assessing the evolving fragility of the global food system

Climate effects of a hypothetical regional nuclear war: Sensitivity to emission duration and particle composition

Risk–Risk Tradeoff Analysis of Nuclear Explosives for Asteroid Deflection

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