How would a nuclear war affect global warming?

A small regional nuclear war could impact global warming – but the results are still pretty grim.

A nuclear war would disrupt the global climate so badly that billions of people could starve to death, according to what experts are calling the most expansive modeling to date of so-called nuclear winter. Although the exact effects remain uncertain, the findings underscore the dangers of nuclear war and offer vital insights about how to prepare for other global disasters, researchers say.

The researchers estimated that the various nuclear exchanges would inject between 5 million and 150 million tons of soot into the atmosphere. They simulated the resulting changes in sunlight, temperature, and precipitation, which they then fed to the crop and fishery models. By tracing the reductions in corn, rice, soybean, wheat, and fish harvests, the team estimated the total loss in calories. From there, they calculated how many people would go hungry—assuming international food trade would cease and resources would be distributed optimally in each country.

Nasa computer models delved into the impact of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs as powerful as 15,000 tons of TNT, exchanged between two developing nuclear powers such as India and Pakistan.

Researchers found that the fires left behind would send five million metric tons of black carbon into the lowest altitude layer of the atmosphere. The soot would absorb solar heat and rise so high that it wouldn't be able to settle back down to the ground.

The results could actually be global cooling, according to Nasa climate models.

Nasa physical scientist Luke Oman at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said: "The effects would [lead] to unprecedented climate change," before suggesting that two to three years after, the average global temperature would drop by at least 2.25 degrees F and 5.4 to 7.2 degrees F in the tropics, Europe, Asia and Alaska.

This wouldn't be a good thing, though.

"Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted, especially in areas that are susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts," Oman said, comparing the potential crop failures and famines to those that followed Indonesia's 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora.

In other nuclear-related news, the US Department of Homeland Security offered some useful advice in the unlikely event of an apocalyptic nuclear explosion: Don't use hair conditioner.

They suggested avoiding the hair product to prevent significant radiation exposure. However, using shampoo is a critical step in the decontamination process, as this removes nuclear fallout.

The bizarre fascinating reason is that the substance can cause radioactive material to stick to your hair.

Perry Romanowski, a cosmetics chemist, previously explained to NPR: "Unlike shampoo, conditioners are meant to stay behind on your hair."

"Skin lotions or moisturising lotions or colour cosmetics that have oils — these go on your skin and can attract dust or radiation particles from the air. So that would be a concern," he added.

The nightmarish prospects have already inspired others to look for ways to fight the hypothetical famine. David Denkenberger, who co-founded the nonprofit Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters, is exploring ideas including scaling up “resilient foods” such as seaweed, repurposing paper factories to produce sugar, converting natural gas into protein with bacteria, and relocating crops to account for an altered climate. He and his research associate Morgan Rivers think those approaches could dramatically increase the amount of food available to humans. “Even if [a substitute] doesn’t taste as good as sweet corn, it’s better than starving,” he says.

Such thought exercises can also help humanity prepare for the effects of climate change and other disasters, Denkenberger adds. “It’s not just nuclear winter; resilience helps us with a lot of other catastrophes … such as a supervolcanic eruption.”

Still, the obvious takeaway for all these scientists is that nuclear war should be avoided at all costs, Rivers says. “Their analysis is showing something really critical to transmit: that nuclear winter is really, really bad.”

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