Regional Nuclear War Could Create the Mother of all Ozone Holes
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 04. 9.08
As if nuclear war wasn't scary enough, a new computer modeling study by CU-Boulder scientists Brian Toon and Michael Mills shows that even a regional nuclear war (between Pakistan and India, for example) could create a near global hole in the ozone layer. This, aside from the other terrifying effects of such a war, would affect life on Earth for at least a decade.
"The computer-modeling study showed a nuclear war between the two countries involving 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear devices [which are relatively small] on each side would cause massive urban fires and loft as much as 5 million metric tons of soot about 50 miles into the stratosphere [...]. The soot would absorb enough solar radiation to heat surrounding gases, setting in motion a series of chemical reactions that would break down the stratospheric ozone layer protecting Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation."
The study is titled "Massive Global Ozone Loss Predicted Following A Regional Nuclear Conflict" and it was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (April 7th issue):
In addition to ozone losses of 25 percent to 40 percent at mid-latitudes, the models show a 50 percent to 70 percent ozone loss at northern high latitudes [...]The ozone losses predicted in the study are much larger than losses estimated in previous “nuclear winter” and “ultraviolet spring” scenario calculations following nuclear conflicts [...] A 1985 National Research Council Report predicted a global nuclear exchange involving thousands of megatons of explosions, rather than the 1.5 megatons assumed in the PNAS study, would deplete only 17 percent of the Northern Hemisphere’s stratospheric ozone, which would recover by half in three years.
Obviously, saying that more efforts should be made to avoid nuclear war at all costs is not a hard sell, but it's scary to think that more than 50 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which was a secondary target - it was supposed to be Kokura) we're still discovering new downsides to these weapons.
::Regional nuclear conflict would create near-global ozone hole, says CU-Boulder study
See also: ::Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor... Your Nuclear Waste, ::Nuclear Energy - Screwing US Taxpayers Behind The Scenes, ::Ozone Could Slash Global Crop Yields by 40% by Century's End
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What happened to the ozone layer from Hiroshima & Nagasaki? Or how about all the testing that went on before that? Or the H-bomb?
So let me get this straight.... You're more concerned with pollutants than the loss of human life. Granted a massive hole in the Ozone would disrupt life on earth, but come on...
--
ed: Not at all.
Just pointing out a new thing that we now know about nukes. Doesn't in any way take away from the gravity of the other effects. As for humans, a global ozone hole would affect people far away from the blast zone too....
There seems to be a huge double standard here. Why does this article not mention the hundreds of nuclear bomb tests that have been conducted by the U.S , China & Russia over the past 50 years? It's highly unlikely that India & Pakistan will engage in a nuclear tit-4-tat so stop will the environmental fear mongering. The U.S should be leading in nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and that starts will getting rid of our stockpiles first.
catherine beat me to it but i will say it to, what happened to the Ozone after all the testing, its still there right
I have to go with Catherine on this one. The article strains credibility almost to the breaking point - Are Hindu or Islamic bombs somehow different that Soviet, American or French weapons?.
The average pace of nuclear weapons testing is remarkable: Since 16 July 1945 there have been 2,044 tests worldwide, the equivalent of one test occurring somewhere in the world every nine days for the last fifty years. (Source - Greenpeace)
I have to wave the "I don't think so" flag on this one though. Ozone hole impact- maybe.
Radioactive Iodine 141, much more dangerous, Cesium 137, Tungsten-185 far longer lasting -- and the Strontium-90 is still with us, as are the many cancer cases from the testing in the Western US.
These are REAL issues, not some computer model from a couple of boffins....
I am not trying to minimize any theorized effect on the ozone layer, but there are far more PROVEN effects from fallout (my own wife is a Downwinder, and has the thyroid problems to prove it) -- we don't need another silly bit of Nuclear Winter scaremongering.
As they say, YMMV - but that's my take.
Is it just the amount of soot being released in the bombed areas/cities that is the ozone-destroying factor here? I understand that 5 million tons is a lot of soot, but surely the level of destruction obtained with conventional weapons during the Second World War (when there were massive fire-bombings of cities like Dresden and Kobe) produced a similarly massive amount of soot. What about large volcanic eruptions (like Krakatoa)? What about the extensive use of napalm during the Vietnam War?
It's not like burning cities are anything new in warfare. Undestandably, 100 burning cities is a lot, but are there that many major metropolitan areas to devastate in the Mideast? It seems to me like we'd be seeing maybe 20 major cities burned in a regional war, and a lot of smaller targets like isolated manufacturing centers and military installations. I just want to see these projected soot tonnages compared side-by-side with historic levels of soot produced by warfare, to get a better perspective on it.
"catherine beat me to it but i will say it to, what happened to the Ozone after all the testing, its still there right"
We're talking about 50 x hiroshima, so one smaller test bomb might not be enough.. But on top of that, I seriously doubt that we were monitoring ozone back in the 40s-50s, etc.
For all we know, there was a hole in the ozone, but as the article says, they heal after some years.
"It's highly unlikely that India & Pakistan will engage in a nuclear tit-4-tat so stop will the environmental fear mongering. "
It's just a study. It's certainly not impossible that a regional nuclear war would happen. There has been enough close calls in history already...
I'm pretty sure almost all nuclear tests have been conducted deep underground, so maybe the atmospheric effects are minimal.
Wikipedia says that there have been over 2000 nuclear tests. Wow.
they're talking about CITIES and FORESTS burning, probably for a long time after the blasts. As far as I know, nuclear tests don't throw up that much stuff in the atmosphere.
The distinction between the aboveground nuclear testing (during which there could be 100 tests in a year, depending on which year you look at) and actual nuclear warfare is the fire factor (as anonymous pointed out). I'm pretty sure that any fires created by the nuclear tests were controlled (and there probably weren't many, since most were carried out in deserts or on tiny islands in the Pacific). A burning city produces soot. Of course, I still take issue with not enough statistics being offered to demonstrate how much soot conventional warfare releases when cities are destroyed and burned by incendiary bombs or napalm.
Who's to say that conventional warfare hasn't affected the ozone layer? it's not like we were monitoring these things back during WWII..
I share the reservations noted above- there were quite a few massive urban fires during WWII, and we followed that up with a couple decades of above ground nuclear testing, including testing of some very, very huge weapons. Some of that testing was even carried out in the upper atmosphere (you know, just to see what would happen), where the effect on ozone could conceivably have been very significant. While ozone levels weren't being closely monitored during this period, it's not like the earth was rendered unfit for life by all this. If Pakistan and India annihilate each other in a nuclear war, the resulting ozone hole is literally the least of our worries.
Just when I was starting to come around to support nuclear war...
Nuclear war - always bad, for every reason.
Some points: Early nuclear tests were airborne. For about the past 45 years nearly all tests have been underground.
Most nuclear tests are fairly small, at least in nuclear weapons terms. Actula use of nuclear weapons in a war are likely to ve vastly more powerful than those tested.
Some early nuclear tests were enormous. Physicists seem to have gotten that out of their systems.
Most underground nuclear tests are designed with great care to contain all of the explosion, gasses and radiation below ground. Some tests do blow out and permit some radioactive gasses to escape.
Open air testing of nukes creates enormous amounts of pollution of various kinds, all radioactive. How the blast is conducted makes a tremendous difference, whether over land or water, high altitude or low. Worst contamination is generally from a low explosion over land.
Most uses of nuclear weapons in a war would either be rather low to try to destroy hardened and underground targets/facilities, or over 1,000 feet in the air to maximize city killing potential.
Where and how the explosion happens also will affect longer term damage, as lighter and smaller particulates will rise higher into the atmosphere and be able to be transported around the globe on the jet stream. Local weather condition will also determine severity of localized fallout. Worst case would be during still winds and heavy rains, maximizing fallout over a smaller area.
There has been a great deal of research into the mechanics and effects of the firestorms that area bombing is designed to create. Similarly, a great deal of research has been done on the effects of Saddam Hussain's torching Kuwait's oil fields - those smoke plumes travelled for thousands of miles, and were thought to have a mild cooling effect.
Nuclear winter has been well documented and researched as a phenomena to follow large scale nuclear war, perhaps precipitating a small ice age for centuries.
Bottom line: no sane person ever wants to see how this plays out in real time.
its pretty
They have tested nuclear weapons in the upper atmosphere, haven't you seen the photos/footage?