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Climatic Effects of Regional Nuclear WarWe 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 seem to be more persistent because of improvements in representing aerosol processes and microphysical/dynamical interactions, including radiative heating effects, in newer global climate system models. The assumptions and calculations that go into these conclusions will be described.
Document ID
20110005667
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Oman, Luke D.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
February 17, 2011
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Meeting Information
Meeting: 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting
Location: Washington, DC
Country: United States
Start Date: February 17, 2011
End Date: February 21, 2011
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
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