Global atmospheric effects of massive smoke injections from a nuclear war - Results from general circulation model simulations
Abstract
Three-dimensional calculations of regional and global climatic effects of smoke generated by a large-scale nuclear war are reported. Tropospheric aerosols of absorption optical depth three, when injected into Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes and maintained for one to three weeks, cause intense radiative heating of the midtroposphere with substantial surface cooling over land. Midlatitude surface temperatures in continental interiors can drop well below freezing in a matter of days regardless of season. These results, although based on several assumptions, suggest that circulation changes caused by aerosol-induced atmospheric radiative heating could spread the aerosols well beyond the altitude and latitude zones in which the smoke was initially generated.
- Publication:
-
Nature
- Pub Date:
- March 1984
- DOI:
- 10.1038/308021a0
- Bibcode:
- 1984Natur.308...21C
- Keywords:
-
- Atmospheric Circulation;
- Atmospheric Effects;
- Nuclear Warfare;
- Smoke;
- Absorptivity;
- Atmospheric Models;
- Surface Temperature;
- Geophysics