NUCLEAR WINTER: Is it Possible?

The term 'nuclear' is no doubt very common to us. Nuclear energy has been harnessed for several purposes including devastating nuclear bombs. The cold war between the US and Soviet Union decades ago posed great concern among nations that were not even connected with the war because of the fear of total war between the two that could involve the use of nuclear weapon. Since then, several nuclear post war assessments have been conducted should the war break out. Today the world is again facing threats of nuclear war. What comes to mind in most of people including me (before) when hearing of nuclear war is the destruction by blast, fire and radiation exposure of the targeted areas. But what's far more catastrophic and chaotic aftermath that a nuclear war can bring is its long term effect-the Nuclear Winter.

Nuclear winter is the severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a nuclear war.The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into the stratosphere, where it can block some direct sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth. Researchers, through the use of advance computer , use the Hamburg and Hiroshima firestorms as models for the theoretical impact on the earth's atmosphere of a nuclear war.

In 2014, Michael J. Mills (at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR) et al. published "Multi-decadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a regional nuclear conflict" in the journal Earth's Future.[153] The authors used computational models developed by NCAR to simulate the climatic effects of a regional nuclear war in which 100 "small" (15 Kt) weapons are detonated over cities. They concluded that:

global ozone losses of 20–50% over populated areas, levels unprecedented in human history, would accompany the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1000 years. We calculate summer enhancements in UV indices of 30–80% over Mid-Latitudes, suggesting widespread damage to human health, agriculture, and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Killing frosts would reduce growing seasons by 10–40 days per year for 5 years. Surface temperatures would be reduced for more than 25 years, due to thermal inertia and albedo effects in the ocean and expanded sea ice. The combined cooling and enhanced UV would put significant pressures on global food supplies and could trigger a global nuclear famine.

Indeed, Nuclear War is far more scary than we think!

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