Climate Impact of a Regional Nuclear Weapons Exchange: An Improved Assessment Based on Detailed Source Calculations
Publisher: Journal of Geophysical Research
Author(s): Jon Reisner, Gennaro D'Angelo, Eunmo Koo, Wesley Even, Matthew Hecht, Elizabeth Hunke, Darin Comeau, Randall Bos, and James Cooley
Date: 2018
Topics: Climate Change, Land, Weapons, Waste, and Pollution
This paper presents a multiscale study examining the impact of a regional exchange of nuclear weapons on global climate. The models investigate multiple phases of the effects of nuclear weapons usage, including growth and rise of the nuclear fireball, ignition and spread of the induced firestorm, and comprehensive Earth system modeling of the oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere. This study follows from the scenario originally envisioned by Robock, Oman, Stenchikov, et al. (2007, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-7-2003-2007), based on the analysis of Toon et al. (2007, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-7-1973-2007), which assumes a regional exchange between India and Pakistan of fifty 15 kt weapons detonated by each side. The authors expand this scenario by modeling the processes that lead to production of black carbon, in order to refine the black carbon forcing estimates of these previous studies. When the Earth system model is initiated with 5 × 109 kg of black carbon in the upper troposphere (approximately from 9 to 13 km), the impact on climate variables such as global temperature and precipitation in simulations is similar to that predicted by previously published work. However, while thorough simulations of the firestorm produce about 3.7 × 109 kg of black carbon, it's found that the vast majority of the black carbon never reaches an altitude above weather systems (approximately 12 km). Therefore, Earth system model simulations conducted with model‐informed atmospheric distributions of black carbon produce significantly lower global climatic impacts than assessed in prior studies, as the carbon at lower altitudes is more quickly removed from the atmosphere. In addition, the model ensembles indicate that statistically significant effects on global surface temperatures are limited to the first 5 years and are much smaller in magnitude than those shown in earlier works. None of the simulations produced a nuclear winter effect. This paper finds that the effects on global surface temperatures are not uniform and are concentrated primarily around the highest arctic latitudes, dramatically reducing the global impact on human health and agriculture compared with that reported by earlier studies. This analysis demonstrates that the probability of significant global cooling from a limited exchange scenario as envisioned in previous studies is highly unlikely, a conclusion supported by examination of natural analogs, such as large forest fires and volcanic eruptions.