Talk:Nuclear winter

Why no real world example?
If this effect(soot getting to the stratosphere) "occurs more frequently than previously thought" according to Smoke in the Stratosphere: What Wildfires have Taught Us About Nuclear Winter then why don't we have a real world example of the most extreme soot-generated-"winter" event ever to have occurred naturally, presented within the article?

The above paper argues that a "a new look at old [ world average temperature ] archives" is warranted given that soot gets to the stratosphere more frequently than previously assumed. Judging from the context, this "new look" would attempt to match lasting occurrences of anomalous temperature drops to wildfire firestorm events, but since its publication in 2006 the authors of the paper have, as far as I've been able to determine, seemingly gone dark and not followed up on this line of study.

The temperature records graphed for the last 140 years is found here alongside the stratospheric sulfate aerosols, Something like the graph as depicted on that page but instead of sulfates, estimated stratospheric soot content, is suggested by the above authors. Sadly such a graph does not appear to ever have been made. Much like the presumably estimated quantity of sulfate aerosols in the graph, being derived from the historical recording of large volcanic eruption events, and I say presumably because in case I'm mistaken, the techniques to directly determine the quantity of sulfates in the stratosphere didn't exist 100 years ago. It seems relatively straightforward to at least get an estimate on the stratospheric soot content given the known records for large firestorm events. So why has this not been done?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.251.172.194 (talk • contribs) 16:17 UTC, 29 December 2014

One thing not talked about is that, no matter what, at some level, a huge death rate would occur with a relatively small number of weapons, far fewer than the number of weapons already available. So the question would be, why are several countries working to make more, or more powerful, versions of these weapons, since it would be suicidal? It’s overkill, they can not be used, or the country would be digging its own grave. It is not in any country’s interest to have a nuclear war. Leaders can be illogical, but just saying’. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:645:4300:EE90:C418:35:B618:F60 (talk) 01:45, 26 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Quite the opposite is happening - the average yield has dropped massively since the largest weapon built, the Tsar Bomba of 1961 was tested, at 50–58 megatons, while the largest US weapon was the Mark 17 nuclear bomb of 1954 of 11-15 megatons. In all cases, bombs have much larger yields than missile warheads, but they have largely given way to missile warheads due to the reduced risk to the crews, and both have shrunk over time as the larger warheads were simply too large to be useful. Soviet air defenses would likely have shot down at least 25% of all incoming bombers before they had a chance to get to their targets, and many of those wouldn't have escaped their own blasts. In contrast the current US B83 bomb is 1.2 megatons, and the W88 used on US MIRV missiles such as the Trident II SLBM is "only" 475 kilotons, while the latest Russia missile warhead used in the RT-2PM2 Topol-M is 550 kilotons. Even if there were a lot more warheads, the overall yield and effect is much, much smaller.
 * During the same period, nuclear treaties also reduced the number of launchers and missiles, so that US stockpiles reached their peak (in MT) around 1960, and Soviet stockpiles peaked around 1977, and current Russian stockpiles are less than 1/3 of what they were then, while US stockpiles are at about 15% of what they were, and their stockpile has remained the same size for decades. In addition, the published numbers for both of their stockpiles do not always make it clear than only about 1/3 are operational. Still more than capable of destroying all life on earth, but they are far from growing, while several countries (Russia, Israel, US, India) have deployed anti-ballistic missile systems that can intercept missiles while in space, where their effects would be minimal, although none would be capable of stopping the entire arsenals from either the US or Russia. Reliability is also a factor - a large percentage of missiles simply would never launch, or would fail shortly after launch - particularly liquid fueled rockets. The UK had a very embarrassing test launch recently which highlighted this - and that was with one of the more reliable systems.
 * What you are seeing is a lot of angst in the press over smaller countries who feel threatened by neighbors, and by aggressive actions by the US, and they are seeking anything to prevent being invaded or attacked - as with North Korea, China and Iran, however these are generally sufficient only to act as a deterrent without being numerous enough to be used to justify starting a war, and their numbers are a tiny fraction of those of Russia or the US. The biggest threats come from India and Israel, both of which have violently aggressive religious bigots at the button.72.12.166.170 (talk) 12:51, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Pinatubo section was removed, as "unrelated"
However as the very last sentence of this section sums-up why it does relate to fire-formed aerosols, the rationale behind its removal is both unsubstantiated and plainly contradicted by the very text that was removed. Read: This...also naturally results as a product of other aerosols that are not emitted by volcanoes, such as man-made "moderately thick smoke loading" pollution, as the same mechanism, the "aerosol direct radiative effect" is behind both.

Eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and agriculture


The eruption of the Philippines volcano - Mount Pinatubo in June 1991 ejected roughly 10 km3 of magma and "17,000,000 metric tons"(17 teragrams) of sulfur dioxide SO2 into the air, introducing ten times as much total SO2 as the 1991 Kuwaiti fires, mostly during the explosive Plinian/Ultra-Plinian event of June 15, 1991, creating a global stratospheric SO2 haze layer which persisted for years. This resulted in the global average temperature dropping by about 0.5 C-change. As volcanic ash falls out of the atmosphere rapidly, the negative agricultural effects of the eruption were largely immediate and localized to a relatively small area in close proximity to the eruption, as they were caused by the resulting thick ash cover that resulted. Globally however, despite a several-month 5% drop in overall solar irradiation, and a reduction in direct sunlight by 30%, there was no negative impact to global agriculture. Surprisingly, a 3-4 year increase in global Agricultural productivity and forestry growth was observed, excepting boreal forest regions. The means by which this was discovered, is that initially at the time, a mysterious drop in the rate at which carbon dioxide (CO2) was filling the atmosphere was observed, which is charted in what is known as the "Keeling Curve". This led numerous scientists to assume that this reduction was due to the lowering of the Earth's temperature, and with that, a slow down in plant and soil respiration, indicating a deleterious impact to global agriculture from the volcanic haze layer. However upon actual investigation, the reduction in the rate at which carbon dioxide filled the atmosphere did not match up with the hypothesis that plant respiration rates had declined. Instead the advantageous anomaly was relatively firmly linked to an unprecedented increase in the growth/net primary production, of global plant life, resulting in the increase of the carbon sink effect of global photosynthesis. The mechanism by which the increase in plant growth was possible, was that the 30% reduction of direct sunlight can also be expressed as an increase or "enhancement" in the amount of diffuse sunlight. With, owing to its intrinsic nature, can illuminate under-canopy leaves permitting more efficient total whole-plant photosynthesis than would otherwise be the case. In stark contrast to the effect of totally clear skies and the direct sunlight that results from it, which casts shadows onto understorey leaves, strickly limiting plant photosynthesis to the top canopy layer. This increase in global agriculture from the volcanic haze layer also naturally results as a product of other aerosols that are not emitted by volcanoes, such as man-made "moderately thick smoke loading" pollution, as the same mechanism, the "aerosol direct radiative effect" is behind both.

Cut down on the repetition of the same papers
Bearing this in mind: The 1988 Air Force Geophysics Laboratory publication An assessment of global atmospheric effects of a major nuclear war'' by Muench, H. Stuart et al. contains a chronology and review of the major reports on the nuclear winter hypothesis from 1983-86. In general these reports arrive at similar conclusions as they are based on the same "assumptions, the same basic data" with minor model-code differences "to arrive at the same answer". They skip the modeling steps of assessing the possibility of fire and the initial fire plumes and instead start the modeling process with a "spatially uniform" "soot cloud" which has found its way into the atmosphere. ''

With that in mind, is there any objections to tabulating the results of the various papers and only giving them ink when they are novel in some way that is not possible to convey in the proposed table?

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:41, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
 * F-14A VF-114 over burning Kuwaiti oil well 1991.JPEG