New studies of climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflict

 

Alan Robock

Department of Environmental Sciences

Rutgers University

robock@envsci.rutgers.edu

+1-732-932-9800 x6222 (work)
+1-732-881-1610 (cell)

 

PowerPoint Presentations:

Climatic Consequences of Regional Nuclear Conflict (31 Mb) (by Alan Robock, October 4, 2007)
        You will also need the movies, pin.AVI and
effct01a.mov

Consequences of Regional-Scale Nuclear Conflicts: Understanding and Avoiding Nuclear Catastrophe (2 Mb)  (by Brian Toon, October 9, 2007)

Publications:
 

Robock, Alan, Luke Oman, Georgiy L. Stenchikov, Owen B. Toon, Charles Bardeen, and Richard P. Turco, 2007:  Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflicts.  Atm. Chem. Phys., 7, 2003-2012.  PDF file   Supplement caption  Supplement   This paper supersedes the previous discussion version.  Russian translation (по русский)

 

Robock, Alan, Luke Oman, and Georgiy L. Stenchikov, 2007:  Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences.  J. Geophys. Res., 112, D13107, doi:2006JD008235.  PDF file  Russian translation (по русский)  Featured as a Research Highlight in Nature.

 

Robock, Alan, Owen B. Toon, Richard P. Turco, Luke Oman, Georgiy L. Stenchikov, and Charles Bardeen, 2007: The continuing environmental threat of nuclear weapons:  Integrated policy responses needed.  EOS, 88, 228, 231, doi:10.1029/2007ES001816.  PDF file

 

Robock, Alan, 2007:  Climate effects of a regional nuclear conflict. IPRC Climate, 7, no. 1, 16-18.   PDF file

 

Toon, Owen B., Richard P. Turco, Alan Robock, Charles Bardeen, Luke Oman, and Georgiy L. Stenchikov, 2007:  Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism.  Atm. Chem. Phys., 7, 1973-2002.  PDF file  This paper supersedes the previous discussion version.

 

Toon, Owen B., Alan Robock, Richard P. Turco, Charles Bardeen, Luke Oman, and Georgiy L. Stenchikov, 2007:  Consequences of regional-scale nuclear conflicts.  Science, 315, 1224-1225.  PDF file

 

Figures and movies from the first paper:

 

BCabsoptdaily.gif is an animation of the smoke distribution as it is spread around the world by the winds.  The smoke is heated by absorbing sunlight, lofted into the upper stratosphere, and blown into the Southern Hemisphere.

 

BCabsopred.gif is the same animation as BCabsoptdaily.gif, but in red.

 

BCabsoptdailyheight.gif contains the same animation as BCabsoptdaily.gif, but also includes a graph at the side that shows the vertical distribution of the smoke.  Within the first week the smoke in the troposphere, the lowest atmospheric layer, is lofted or washed out, and the remaining smoke is lofted well into the stratosphere, removed from weather where it can remain for years.  The black horizontal line at about 150 mb marks the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere, at about 12 km (7 miles).  The top of the stratosphere (at 50 km or 30 miles) has a pressure of about 1 mb.

 

Fig3TempPrecip.jpg  Time variation of global average net surface shortwave radiation, surface air temperature, and precipitation changes for the 5 Tg standard case.  The global average precipitation in the control case is 3.0 mm/day, so the changes in years 2-4 represent a 9% global average reduction in precipitation.  The precipitation recovers faster than the temperature, but both lag the forcing.  For comparison the global average net surface shortwave forcing from a model simulation of the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption is shown.  By contrast, volcanic particle last for a much shorter time in the atmosphere, as they are not lofted by solar absorption.

 

Fig5SummerTempMap.jpg  Surface air temperature changes for the 5 Tg standard case averaged for June, July, and August of the first year following the smoke injection.  Effects are largest over land, but there is substantial cooling over tropical oceans, too.  The warming over Antarctica is for a small area, is part of normal winter interannual variability, and is not significant.

 

Fig9GISStemperatures.jpg  Global average surface air temperature change from the 5 Tg standard case (red) in the context of the climate change of the past 125 years.  Observations are from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies analysis (Hansen et al., 2001, updated at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/).

 

Fig10HockeyStick.jpg  Northern Hemisphere average surface air temperature change from 5 Tg standard case (red) in the context of the climate change of the past 1000 years.  Black curve is from Mann et al. (1999), and the blue curve is from the latest data from the Climatic Research Unit website (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/).

 

Fig11GrowingSeason.jpg  Change in growing season (period with freeze-free days) in the first year following the 5 Tg standard case smoke injection. 

 

References

 

Hansen, J. E., et al., 2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change, J. Geophys. Res., 106, 23,947-23,963, doi:10.1029/2001JD000354.

 

Mann, M. E., R. S. Bradley, and M. K. Hughes, 1999: Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 26, 759-762.

 



Prepared by Alan Robock (robock@envsci.rutgers.edu) - Last updated on October 9, 2007