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| Nuclear weapons tests by both the United States and the former USSR provided insight into what would happen to the atmosphere, weather, and climate when a global nuclear war broke out. |
With tensions rising between nuclear-armed countries, some are expressing concern about the threat of nuclear war and what one nuclear winter after another could look like. But what will happen in the event of a nuclear war to global weather and climate?
For starters, any nuclear war, whether it is a small-scale event or a full-blown global event, will have immediately devastating effects on life and property, with lasting effects that can last for generations. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; Unlike conventional warfare and conventional bombs, nuclear weapons can cause destruction in a very short period of time and have long-lasting effects due to radiological issues.
A nuclear war on a regional scale would immediately take millions of lives; Globally, the number of deaths would be in the billions. But while fighting nuclear states would aim to take out major population centers and/or cities of vital importance, billions of people living in more rural areas are likely to survive the immediate explosions. However what happens next is in doubt and a matter of scientific debate.
One possible theory of the consequence of an atom was the presence of a nuclear holocaust. In this theory, a large-scale detonation of nuclear weapons would not only result in widespread destruction, but would result in massive amounts of radioactive effects that would in turn kill billions, if not all. Some scientists believe that the fallout alone could have caused the extinction of humanity or the overall cessation of life on Earth. But how serious such an incident would be, there is a big debate going on here. While radiation sickness from fallout would be an issue, weather patterns and airflow at the time of nuclear war could drive radioactive debris in some directions but not others. While most of modern technology around the world will be destroyed due to electromagnetic pulses, there are scientists who believe that humans will still live.
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| This chart shows the height of the mushroom cloud as a function of the explosive yield erupted as surface eruptions. In this illustration, commercial aircraft with an estimated altitude of 0 operate; 1 In 1945 the U.S. The "Fat Man" detonated by the Japanese city of Nagasaki is the scale of a nuclear weapon; 2 In 1954 the U.S. The "Castle Bravo" nuclear weapons test explosion carried out by Bikini Atoll. |
Whether or not humans survived the initial explosions and radioactive fallout, some scientists also believe that a nuclear war would be followed by some kind of nuclear twilight or nuclear winter. But even here, scientists have very different hypotheses of what would happen in a real nuclear winter.
A nuclear winter is theorized in view of the widespread firearms resulting from a nuclear weapons attack; It is believed that the smoke and soot from such fires would change the climate and weather. Scientists based these scenarios on observations made in the Hiroshima attack on Japan in World War II, on various nuclear weapons tests conducted by both the United States and the former Soviet Union, and on large-scale industrial and wildfires inhaling smoke. But based his views on it. and debris in the sky. The general hypothesis is that the smoke and soot from these large explosions and fires found in nuclear explosions will make its way into the upper levels of the troposphere and into the stratosphere, where it will be able to block a significant amount of solar radiation. reach the surface of the earth.
While scientists agree that adding smoke and soot to the atmosphere will lead to global cooling, some forecasts are much harsher than others. Some computer models suggest a global cooling average of a few degrees Celsius a year, while other models suggest a much more dramatic temperature departure over 40 days. Either way, significantly cooler temperatures would be very disruptive to life, killing or damaging whatever crops might be grown in the wake of nuclear war.
Because nuclear explosions also break down the air around them to produce large amounts of nitrogen oxides, those growing oxides can destroy the ozone layer that protects Earth's surface from harmful radiation from the Sun. A study published in 2008 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that a regional nuclear conflict between two countries, such as Pakistan and India, would create a near-global ozone hole that would bombard the Earth's surface by harmful UV. . Radiation everywhere. In that instance, while atomic bombs only destroyed regional cities there, the resulting ozone depletion could result in cancer and loss of human, animal and plant life worldwide.
Nuclear winter may not be the only meteorological problem for nuclear war survivors. Beyond nuclear winter, some scientists also believe that nuclear summer will come. With so many fires burning and so many people and animal bodies decomposing, the decay of organic matter and methane can fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Unlike modern-day greenhouse gas emissions, a nuclear winter can produce greenhouse gas emissions thousands of times higher than today, and in turn create a "nuclear heat" of tremendous warming.
Any nuclear war, regional or global, could be catastrophic. Even if a nuclear war did leave behind millions of survivors in rural areas, the impacts of a nuclear holocaust, nuclear winter, ozone hole, or nuclear summer could kill off those survivors relatively quickly. For now, these post-nuclear war scenarios are merely theories; most hope those theories will never have to be tested.