nuclear winter, from the archives

[Andrew Revkin]

Just in case it's of interest to those pondering nuclear winter in relation to the issues at hand, here's what may be a useful benchmark - my 1985 cover story on nuclear winter science - first time it's been digitized. Some familiar names quoted.

http://www.slideshare.net/Revkin/hard-facts-about-nuclear-winter-1985

--

_

ANDREW C. REVKIN

Dot Earth blogger, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/dotearth
Senior Fellow, Pace Acad. for Applied Env. Studies
Cell: 914-441-5556 Fax: 914-989-8009   
Twitter: @revkin Skype: Andrew.Revkin

[Andrew Lockley]

One interesting aspect of this discussion is effect on global climate of catastrophic forest fires

Vizy et al, and other authors, have looked at biome scale wildfires, notably in the Amazon region.

These have the possibility to affect global climate severely, and potentially (I suggest) induce a sudden disruption to the hydro cycle that may trigger further wild fires.

This would appear a sensible target for geoengineering, and 'de smoking' could be a new sub discipline.

Does anyone have any ideas? Would cloud seeding or ionization be possibilities worth investigating? Or would management of fire on the ground with controlled burns, bulldozers, etc. be better?

A

[Russell Seitz]

It is hard to adduce natural analogs to phenomena that do not exist , for example, the instantaneous appearance of a global homogeneous soot cloud with an optical depth of twenty, which was the  parametric basis of the apocalyptic TTAPS model  that climatologists Starley Thompson and Steve Schneider laid to rest  in their 1986 Foreign Affairs article, 'Nuclear Winter Reappraised ':

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20042777

One very large regional  fire did however overlap the lower range of the TTAPS scenarios- the  Siberian forest fires of 1915, which I discusssed in Nature 323, 116 - 117 (11 September 1986);   doi:10.1038/323116a0

[Alan Robock]

Dear Andy,

Thanks for this.  It is amazing how these results have held up in the intervening 27 years.  In fact our new climate model simulations show that nuclear winter was correct, and that it would last longer than we thought then.  And now we know that new nuclear states can produce enough smoke that the climate response, though not nuclear winter, would be cliamte change unprecedented in recorded human history, with severe agricultural impacts.

http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf

http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/

   
Alan

Alan Robock, Professor II (Distinguished Professor)
  Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
  Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program
  Associate Director, Center for Environmental Prediction
Department of Environmental Sciences              Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University                                  Fax: +1-732-932-8644
14 College Farm Road                   E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551  USA      http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock

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[rongre...@comcast.net]

Andrew and list  (cc Andy Rivkin)

   This is to urge replacement of your "controlled burns, bulldozers, etc."  in your final sentence,

       "Or would management of fire on the ground with controlled burns, bulldozers, etc. be better? "

with "biopower, biofuels, biochar, etc:   Controlled burns and bulldozers are far from optimum approaches.

   The subject of precautionary removal (thinning and perodic, appropriate-width fire breaks) is often mentioned in biochar literature.  The intent is to show this as a way to up the often-too-low projections.  The main additional rationales for precautionary action I have seen are not smoke minimization, but rather lowering property damage and insurance costs.  If we are at all interested in AGW, we need to both be replacing fossil fuels and practicing CDR - and must think about state and national forest land that is rarely managed for either carbon neutral or carbon negative purposes.   This is not in current national planning in the US.

   In Colorado, there is a great deal of beetle killed pne, which is sure to cause some future renewed interest in precautionary action.  Just a few months ago, more than 350 homes and $110 million were lost on the outskirts of Ft.  Collins,  Colorado.   Thinking about these near-urban regions (such as Vail and Aspen)  in fire minimization terms is a must -  limited now by not having figuring out how to pay for it.   Carbon credits could make some of the difference.  But even better is the development of new technologies that can bring cost effective conversions to the resource, rather than the more expensive converse.  I am particularly thinking of the brand-new technology for a drop-in gasoline (with equal biochar production) seen at www.coolplanetbiofuels.com .

   Smoke also will be reduced and that will be much appreciated - but there are many other reasons to think harder about forest and fire management..

Ron

[Russell Seitz]

Alan's powers of revision continue to astonish. He writes :  "It is amazing how these results have held up in the intervening 27 years."

Really ? Has he forgotten the five order of magnitude difference in darkness between the "Apocalyptic predictions" Sagan adduced in 1984 , and the recent modeling of Robock et al ?   It projects  project optical  depths  one or less-  that's a million times  brighter than the  optical depth of 20  postulated  20 years ago. Alan predicts  surface coolings in the single digits where TTAPS projected a global deep freeze.  Run the  time -temperature integrals and Alan's  predictions add up to a most a few hundred degree -days. 

In contrast  to Alan's efforts , the widely advertised TTAPS worst-case model turned the sun off like a light bulb, reducing insolation by a factor of a million, for  a biblical 40 days and 40 nights. predictably producing subzero cooling that totaled 22,000 degree-days-  an effect a hundred times more severe than that Robock recently  published .

22,000 degree-days F is twice the chill of an honest to god winter in Alaska or Siberia'  Has alan forgotten thatthe worst- and most heavily publicized of  Sagan's 'Apocalyptic predictions ' featured pervasive frost on the equator, and tempertures that stayed subzero long enough for Sagan to opine " the extinction of Homo sapiens cannot be excluded.  

Merely running his models longer does nothing to justify Alan's claim that : " In fact our new climate model simulations show that nuclear winter was correct, and that it would last longer than we thought then."

For details, and links to a graphic comparison of Robock & Sagan's 2007 and 1983 results see my correspondence in Nature , July 7 2011

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7354/full/475037b.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110707

[Russell Seitz]

Here are the time-temperature curves of the 1983 'nuclear winter ' model, and those  of Robock et al. 2007 , superimposed on the same scale:

http://s1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/RussellSeitz/?action=view&current=TTAPSROBOCK.jpg

[Alan Robock]

Dear Russell,

You are comparing apples and oranges, or apples and something that is not even fruit.  Are you doing this on purpose to fool readers or did you not even read the papers and understand what was done?

Here are the differences:

1.  TTAPS looked at three scenarios of global nuclear war, and our scenario was only 100 Hiroshima size weapons, with a total explosive power of 1.5 MT (which could produce 5 Tg of smoke).  So the scenarios differ by factors of 67 to 6,667 in terms of explosive power and about 100 in terms of smoke generated for the TTAPS baseline case.  Why would you expect the response to be the same?

2.  The TTAPS model had no heat capacity at the surface, so it was a model of the response in a continental interior.  I think what you plotted was our global average response.  The globe is 70% ocean.  So the global average response would be more than10 times smaller than the middle of a continent.

Do you think anyone will be fooled by your figure?  Wouldn't you be surprised if the response did not differ by factors of 100 to 1000?

   
Alan

Alan Robock, Professor II (Distinguished Professor)
  Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
  Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program
  Associate Director, Center for Environmental Prediction
Department of Environmental Sciences              Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University                                  Fax: +1-732-932-8644
14 College Farm Road                   E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551  USA      http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock

On 9/26/2012 6:32 PM, Russell Seitz wrote:

Here are the time-temperature curves of the 1983 'nuclear winter ' model, and those  of Robock et al. 2007 , superimposed on the same scale:

http://s1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/RussellSeitz/?action=view&current=TTAPSROBOCK.jpg

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[Russell Seitz]

Dear Alan;

You are trying to deny the elephant sized apple in the room-- your effort to redefine 'nuclear winter '  downward amonts to raw semantic aggresion in the light of  how Carl Sagan made its quantitative meaning  perfectly clear by telling a national television audience it was "precisely" like the K-T impact. 

That astronomical megahype leaves you, as the neologism's defender, to explain to us why you and a few true believers are still enamored of the phrase when both parameter studies and more sophisticated  models have so thoroughly defrosted it?

The numbers talk, even if you don't like the look of them side by side - TTAPS  publicists( Porter Novelli) were retained before the  paper was published to  create a cold war factoid by applying the tern to a fruit salad of over twenty ( not three)  scenarios. Some were based on non-existant arsenals and others injected no smoke or carbon black into the atmosphere,  let alone the 5 Tg  Alan has modeled. The failure of Sagan to incorporate ocean thermal mass from the one dimensional model TTAPS  was one of many reasons  Steve Schneider took him to task in Foreign Affairs. 

Another was Sagan's insistance in its pages that just the sort of low-yield regional exchange Alan has modeled " a pure tactical exchange, in Europe say" fought with sub-Hiroshima yield  neutron bombs would still precipiate a global deep freeze. 

History is full of prophets of doom who fail to deliver, but I appreciate that you have wisely refrained from emulating TTAPS most unrealistic parameterizations in your  work. So would I, because the early models larger-than-life fuel loadings and arsenals have long since been discredited . perhaps you should recall the sober title of the  Ambio article in which Paul Crutzen first broached the subject ; Twilight at Noon,

That phrase  pretty well nails what you've modeled, and may indeed explain why first broad-ranging study to review the TTPS results,  the 1985 NAS /NRC reportThe Effects on the Atmosphere of a Major Nuclear Exchange  does not  even contain the expression 'nuclear winter , and succesive generations of more advanced models all failed to reproduce the " apocalyptic predictions" publicized at the Cold War's height.

Having known Sin at Hiroshima, science was bound to  run into advertising sooner  or later - anybody can  tell a systems programmer to paint a model sky pitch black but justifying such an action on retrospect is an altogether different matter..

[Fred Zimmerman]

Does anyone care anymore what Carl Sagan wrote 30 years ago?  Half the population is too young to even know who he was.   I question whether anyone who was under 30 in 1986 even remembers anything about the early debates. Surely what is more important now is our current understanding of the climate effects of a nuclear exchange, and even that is, frankly, not all that important, since the proposition that "a nuclear exchange would be bad" is amply supported by a thousand other variables.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/geoengineering/-/1U0iCTqy8lIJ.

[Mike MacCracken]

Here’s my take on the exchange:

It seems to me the core of the difference in the use and interpretation of a metaphor to describe scientific results—and arguing over this can unfortunately obscure the significance of the scientific work.

Russell is doing what scientists often do, namely taking words literally. So, TTAPS did project freezing of the whole world—I don’t recall them saying that it was just the center of continents, etc.--with temperature predicted to go way below zero (and the accompanying article on the ecological response did take the TTAPS results directly). That is what Russell is saying is meant by the phrase “nuclear winter.” When the 3-D models were run, etc., the results were variously called a “nuclear autumn,” “nuclear drought,” etc., so the literal result of TTAPS description was indeed modified in the SCOPE assessment.

But the SCOPE assessment, in addition to describing the very sizeable climatic disruptions, also reiterated that the direct effects of such an exchange would be horrific (this was generally previously understood) and also spent time on a point not well developed at the time, namely that the likely disruption of the emerging global economy (in medicines, grains, fertilizer, energy, financial markets, and more) would also lead to horrific consequences, and this was whether there was a climatic effect or not. Together, the various dire outcomes could be characterized, at least in metaphorical terms, as a “nuclear winter” and so the term from TTAPS persisted, though was not generally used in the scientific assessments describing all the impacts. Basically, what was made clear was that large-scale nuclear war would be a real disaster for combatants and also, importantly, for non-combatants, and the consequences would be significantly worse than the scenarios being used in some of the civil defense planning that envisioned getting into shelters for a week or so and for planning for how to restart postal operations.

As Alan states in his note back to Russell, the quantitative results of his recent work are, of course, different than for the global nuclear exchange. Thus, interpreting the words “nuclear winter” literally, this means the term is no longer applicable (indeed, as it was not really literally applicable after the SCOPE assessment). However, from the perspective of the types of consequences that would result from a nuclear exchange, the consequences from Alan’s smaller exchanges, so the mix of the direct and indirect effects (indirect effects include those arising from lower light levels, modified weather, and over time, departures from normal conditions—and then subsequent impacts) would be of similar significance, at least for some, possibly large, areas. From this perspective, then, continuing to portray the significance of the changes (in particular that there were environmental consequences over and above the direct destruction and fallout, even if the quantitative aspects were different) as “nuclear winter” is at least metaphorically justified, for the term indicates that the resulting conditions would be very hard and difficult to deal with (whether caused by a cooling few degrees or a few tens of degrees, the loss of a crop is the loss of a crop).

My personal opinion is that scientific results are best described, at least to other scientists, using words literally, and I generally think using metaphors should be avoided in scientific discussions. Metaphors can, however, be useful to convey the significance of results to policymakers—and Alan’s papers are aimed at speaking to policymakers as well as scientists. In the cases described in Alan’s papers, which involve nuclear exchanges between mainly low-latitude nuclear-capable nations, I actually wonder, however, whether “winter” is the most appropriate metaphor because “winter” is experienced so differently at low as compared to in mid-latitudes--”drought” might be a better metaphor (caused by the stabilization of the atmosphere resulting from smoke-induced heating aloft).

In any case, this distracting arguing about the label really obscures what the scientific results show, which is that, in addition to the horrific direct effects, nuclear war can lead to significant indirect effects, impacting not only those who are struck by the bombs, but those well beyond (and this is especially important because of the limited food reserves now available around the world—basically the world’s nations don’t seem to store, for example, a full growing season’s worth of grain). Together with all of the other consequences of nuclear war, the studies thus indicate that all nations, whether combatants or not, should have a strong self-interest in ensuring that even a relatively small nuclear exchange does not take place and the leaders of nations holding nuclear weapons should be made aware of this.

Mike MacCracken

On 9/27/12 8:49 AM, "Fred Zimmerman" <w...@nimblebooks.com> wrote:

Does anyone care anymore what Carl Sagan wrote 30 years ago?  Half the population is too young to even know who he was.   I question whether anyone who was under 30 in 1986 even remembers anything about the early debates. Surely what is more important now is our current understanding of the climate effects of a nuclear exchange, and even that is, frankly, not all that important, since the proposition that "a nuclear exchange would be bad" is amply supported by a thousand other variables.


On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Russell Seitz <russel...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Alan;

You are trying to deny the elephant sized apple in the room-- your effort to redefine 'nuclear winter '  downward amonts to raw semantic aggresion in the light of  how Carl Sagan made its quantitative meaning  perfectly clear by telling a national television audience it was "precisely" like the K-T impact. 

That astronomical megahype leaves you, as the neologism's defender, to explain to us why you and a few true believers are still enamored of the phrase when both parameter studies and more sophisticated  models have so thoroughly defrosted it?

The numbers talk, even if you don't like the look of them side by side - TTAPS  publicists( Porter Novelli) were retained before the  paper was published to  create a cold war factoid by applying the tern to a fruit salad of over twenty ( not three)  scenarios. Some were based on non-existant arsenals and others injected no smoke or carbon black into the atmosphere,  let alone the 5 Tg  Alan has modeled. The failure of Sagan to incorporate ocean thermal mass from the one dimensional model TTAPS  was one of many reasons  Steve Schneider took him to task in Foreign Affairs. 

Another was Sagan's insistance in its pages that just the sort of low-yield regional exchange Alan has modeled " a pure tactical exchange, in Europe say" fought with sub-Hiroshima yield  neutron bombs would still precipiate a global deep freeze. 


History is full of prophets of doom who fail to deliver, but I appreciate that you have wisely refrained from emulating TTAPS most unrealistic parameterizations in your  work. So would I, because the early models larger-than-life fuel loadings and arsenals have long since been discredited . perhaps you should recall the sober title of the  Ambio article in which Paul Crutzen first broached the subject ; Twilight at Noon,

That phrase  pretty well nails what you've modeled, and may indeed explain why first broad-ranging study to review the TTPS results,  the 1985 NAS /NRC reportThe Effects on the Atmosphere of a Major Nuclear Exchange  does not  even contain the expression 'nuclear winter , and succesive generations of more advanced models all failed to reproduce the " apocalyptic predictions" publicized at the Cold War's height.

Having known Sin at Hiroshima, science was bound to  run into advertising sooner  or later - anybody can  tell a systems programmer to paint a model sky pitch black but justifying such an action on retrospect is an altogether different matter..

On Wednesday, September 26, 2012 7:49:34 PM UTC-4, Alan Robock wrote:

   
 
Dear Russell,
 
 You are comparing apples and oranges, or apples and something that is not even fruit.  Are you doing this on purpose to fool readers or did you not even read the papers and understand what was done?
 
 Here are the differences:
 
 1.  TTAPS looked at three scenarios of global nuclear war, and our scenario was only 100 Hiroshima size weapons, with a total explosive power of 1.5 MT (which could produce 5 Tg of smoke).  So the scenarios differ by factors of 67 to 6,667 in terms of explosive power and about 100 in terms of smoke generated for the TTAPS baseline case.  Why would you expect the response to be the same?
 
 2.  The TTAPS model had no heat capacity at the surface, so it was a model of the response in a continental interior.  I think what you plotted was our global average response.  The globe is 70% ocean.  So the global average response would be more than10 times smaller than the middle of a continent.
 
 Do you think anyone will be fooled by your figure?  Wouldn't you be surprised if the response did not differ by factors of 100 to 1000?
 
   
Alan

Alan Robock, Professor II (Distinguished Professor)
  Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
  Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program
  Associate Director, Center for Environmental Prediction

Department of Environmental Sciences              Phone: +1-848-932-5751 <tel:%2B1-848-932-5751>
Rutgers University                                  Fax: +1-732-932-8644 <tel:%2B1-732-932-8644>

14 College Farm Road                   E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu

New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551  USA      http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock <http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock>

 On 9/26/2012 6:32 PM, Russell Seitz wrote:
 
 

Here are the time-temperature curves of the 1983 'nuclear winter ' model, and those  of Robock et al. 2007 , superimposed on the same scale:

 
 

 

http://s1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/RussellSeitz/?action=view&current=TTAPSROBOCK.jpg <http://s1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/RussellSeitz/?action=view&current=TTAPSROBOCK.jpg>
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 


 
 

 

 
 

 
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[Michael Fleming]

"Emitted by natural and human sources, aerosols can directly influence climate by reflecting or absorbing the sun's radiation. The small particles also affect climate indirectly by seeding clouds and changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity.

A new study, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, used a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to investigate how sensitive different regional climates are to changes in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols.

The researchers found that the mid and high latitudes are especially responsive to changes in the level of aerosols. Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades. The results were published in the April issue of Nature Geoscience."

Since aerosols are claimed to CAUSE global warming, I would like to question anyone's "scientific research" that claims to somehow help it by creating the destruction of our atmosphere with aerosol pollution.

Also, Andrew claimed earlier in a private message that "Aluminium is not envisaged as a suitable candidate for geoengineering by most authors."

I would like to educate Andrew on the situation in America, where geo-engineers at the IPCC measure Aluminum by the ton. Andrew likes to blame this problem on "volcano eruptions."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEfJO0-cTis

I like to blame the problem on "ignorance."

"Chemtrails exist only in the minds of believers." -Andrew Lockley

I apologize, Andrew. Maybe I'm a "conspiracy theorist" for not calling it "stratospheric aerosol geo-engineering."

Your weather modification program has murdered millions of people to date. I hope to God that you people wake the hell up and stop spraying "sulfur, metal, and dust" for "global warming."

7 lawsuits have now been filed against this program in the United States. Your "clouds" created by "persistent contrails" look absolutely disgusting. Like represents like, and like breeds like. I hope that anyone with any type of class whatsoever would recognize this and stop associating themselves with this program.

Have a great, sunny day.

[Veli Albert Kallio]

I wonder if Alan could clarify a bit his point no. 2:
 
"The TTAPS model had no heat capacity at the surface, so it was a model of the response in a continental interior. I think what you plotted was our global average response. The globe is 70% ocean. So the global average response would be more than 10 times smaller than the middle of a continent."
 
I do recognise the issue of the shading impact of nuclear explosion dust clouds having huge impact on the continental interiors, but not globally. However, what is the effect on the overall oceanic albedo as the oceans do have plenty of supersaturated air masses that are highly aerosol deficient. Could supply of nuclei for condensation create new clouds and cloud whitening effects to the extent Stephen Salter's ideas. Was the cloud whitening and cloud formation over oceans included in your simulations? Or was it just the dust shade?

How about wind drift, surely nuclear war does not stop the winds and these will scatter nuclear dust much like volcanic dust? I agree that local effects of pulverising mountains for dust clouds are severe, and one of the problems is that most tall mountains reside on the western edges of continents, leading to dust fall and biggest effects to highly populated areas.
 
Professor Teller was always an advocate of thermonuclear explosives for weather or climate modification. Would you consider it a possibility to ameliorate the worst heat waves or supersaturated ocean air by nuclear devises when heat trapping water vapour builds up dangerously high in the air as climate gets ever warmer?

Note that biological systems are sensitive to weather extremes, not very much to the rising average temperatures?

(1.) Can we manage 2 - 4 - 6- 8- 10 degree warmer climate by occasional explosions when system is most overheated to allow the biological systems to recuperate. Not continuously suppressing the temperature, but when the weather is too hot for organisms and ecosystems.

(2.) Can we remove supersaturated water vapour from the atmosphere, say above the Pacific Ocean, by explosions providing seeding nucleation centres to (i) flush water out and hence reduce its greenhouse gas impact, and (ii) to generate sunlight reflecting clouds or cloud brightening above oceans whenever air is supersaturated.
 
I became intrigued to Alan's response as I could not see these issues addressed in his reply. I do recognise the accumulation of radiochemicals in each explosion, which is a major issue but if there is an immediate threat to ecosystems and evidence of them dying in heat, or lack of rain, would these measures be agreeable by rise in cesium and iodine.

Regards,

Albert  



 

---

Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:13:55 -0400
Subject: Re: [geo] Re: nuclear winter, from the archives
From: mmac...@comcast.net
To: Geoengi...@googlegroups.com

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.

[Mike MacCracken]

Dear Albert—Having been at Livermore Lab with Teller from mid-1960s on, I don’t know where you are getting the idea that Teller was an advocate of nuclear explosives for weather or climate modification. I do recall getting a call to come to Teller’s office one day in the 1970s during a drought affecting the western US to address a suggestion by a colleague that perhaps a nuclear explosion could be used to break the California drought, with a follow-on questions about whether a GCM model could be used to help in understanding this idea (the latter answer was easy—no, not nearly at that time).

Teller being very interested in order-of-magnitude estimates of phenomena as a way of considering possibilities, I made three order of magnitude estimates of the amount of energy involved in the drought to address the first question:
(a) Taking roughly the area of California and amount of rain deficit, I multiplied by the heat released upon condensation (so to cause evaporation as well) and got something like, as I recall, a few times 10^21 calories (apologies for the old units);
(b) Namias suggested the drought was caused by an ocean temperature anomaly, so I multiplied the area (I think it was 2000 by 2000 km) times a mixed layer depth and something like 2 C SST anomaly and got, again as I recall, something like a few times 10^21 calories; and
(c) Some suggested the drought was persisting because of the excess snow cover over the Great Plains and Midwest, so I estimated an area, an albedo change, and a typical level of insolation, and got, again as I recall, something like a few times 10^21 calories.

Somehow, a few times 10^21 calories seemed a good number to use in thinking about a potential nuclear intervention (forgetting at this point all the other potential problems—might it even work was the question). So, I went and got the energy release for a nuclear explosion. A one Mt nuclear explosion is 10^15 calories. One can’t go to bigger explosions because those carry most of the heat, etc. up into the stratosphere so it would seem hard to be affecting the causes of the drought (perhaps by affecting the atmospheric circulation) by putting energy into the stratosphere.

When up in Teller’s office, I did the above calculations on a blackboard for Teller and colleagues, and then we talked a bit. Even if one assumes some sort process with 100% efficiency (very unlikely), one is 6 orders of magnitude off. Then assume one could use 1% somehow to trigger a 100% efficient transfer, and one is still at 10^4 Mt; this amount is not very different than the magnitude of all nuclear weapons of both superpowers at the time. With that result, the conversation was over and I never heard any other idea on this come up (there was actually a suggestion in the 1960s, as I recall, that one could use nuclear explosions to melt Arctic sea ice by creating a fog, but I don’t think he ever was an advocate of that, or even an estimate of magnitude as I have done). Now, Teller was an advocate for at least some period of using nuclear explosives to move dirt around to make a port or canal, etc., but as far as I recall he was not an advocate of using nuclear explosives to change the weather and climate (and I knew him basically from mid-1960s on).

Best, Mike

PS—I might add also that a large hurricane processes (i.e., shifts energy between latent, kinetic, and potential forms) a few megaton’s worth of energy every minute, dissipating several percent of that amount (and still causing widespread damage over large areas). The energy content of such a big storm is huge, not at all something one could really disturb in any controlled way with a nuclear explosion (and this is before considering a whole range of other issues about doing so).

On 9/30/12 11:56 AM, "Veli Albert Kallio" <albert...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I wonder if Alan could clarify a bit his point no. 2:
 
"The TTAPS model had no heat capacity at the surface, so it was a model of the response in a continental interior.  I think what you plotted was our global average response.  The globe is 70% ocean.  So the global average response would be more than 10 times smaller than the middle of a continent."
 
I do recognise the issue of the shading impact of nuclear explosion dust clouds having huge impact on the continental interiors, but not globally. However, what is the effect on the overall oceanic albedo as the oceans do have plenty of supersaturated air masses that are highly aerosol deficient. Could supply of nuclei for condensation create new clouds and cloud whitening effects to the extent Stephen Salter's ideas. Was the cloud whitening and cloud formation over oceans included in your simulations? Or was it just the dust shade?

How about wind drift, surely nuclear war does not stop the winds and these will scatter nuclear dust much like volcanic dust? I agree that local effects of pulverising mountains for dust clouds are severe, and one of the problems is that most tall mountains reside on the western edges of continents, leading to dust fall and biggest effects to highly populated areas.
 
Professor Teller was always an advocate of thermonuclear explosives for weather or climate modification. Would you consider it a possibility to ameliorate the worst heat waves or supersaturated ocean air by nuclear devises when heat trapping water vapour builds up dangerously high in the air as climate gets ever warmer?

Note that biological systems are sensitive to weather extremes, not very much to the rising average temperatures?

(1.) Can we manage 2 - 4 - 6- 8- 10 degree warmer climate by occasional explosions when system is most overheated to allow the biological systems to recuperate. Not continuously suppressing the temperature, but when the weather is too hot for organisms and ecosystems.

(2.) Can we remove supersaturated water vapour from the atmosphere, say above the Pacific Ocean, by explosions providing seeding nucleation centres to (i) flush water out and hence reduce its greenhouse gas impact, and (ii) to generate sunlight reflecting clouds or cloud brightening above oceans whenever air is supersaturated.
 
I became intrigued to Alan's response as I could not see these issues addressed in his reply. I do recognise the accumulation of radiochemicals in each explosion, which is a major issue but if there is an immediate threat to ecosystems and evidence of them dying in heat, or lack of rain, would these measures be agreeable by rise in cesium and iodine.

Regards,

Albert



 

---

Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:13:55 -0400
Subject: Re: [geo] Re: nuclear winter, from the archives
From: mmac...@comcast.net
To: Geoengi...@googlegroups.com

Re: [geo] Re: nuclear winter, from the archives Here’s my take on the exchange:

It seems to me the core of the difference in the use and interpretation of a metaphor to describe scientific results—and arguing over this can unfortunately obscure the significance of the scientific work.

Russell is doing what scientists often do, namely taking words literally. So, TTAPS did project freezing of the whole world—I don’t recall them saying that it was just the center of continents, etc.--with temperature predicted to go way below zero (and the accompanying article on the ecological response did take the TTAPS results directly). That is what Russell is saying is meant by the phrase “nuclear winter.” When the 3-D models were run, etc., the results were variously called a “nuclear autumn,” “nuclear drought,” etc., so the literal result of TTAPS description was indeed modified in the SCOPE assessment.

But the SCOPE assessment, in addition to describing the very sizeable climatic disruptions, also reiterated that the direct effects of such an exchange would be horrific (this was generally previously understood) and also spent time on a point not well developed at the time, namely that the likely disruption of the emerging global economy (in medicines, grains, fertilizer, energy, financial markets, and more) would also lead to horrific consequences, and this was whether there was a climatic effect or not. Together, the various dire outcomes could be characterized, at least in metaphorical terms, as a “nuclear winter” and so the term from TTAPS persisted, though was not generally used in the scientific assessments describing all the impacts. Basically, what was made clear was that large-scale nuclear war would be a real disaster for combatants and also, importantly, for non-combatants, and the consequences would be significantly worse than the scenarios being used in some of the civil defense planning that envisioned getting into shelters for a week or so and for planning for how to restart postal operations.

As Alan states in his note back to Russell, the quantitative results of his recent work are, of course, different than for the global nuclear exchange. Thus, interpreting the words “nuclear winter” literally, this means the term is no longer applicable (indeed, as it was not really literally applicable after the SCOPE assessment). However, from the perspective of the types of consequences that would result from a nuclear exchange, the consequences from Alan’s smaller exchanges, so the mix of the direct and indirect effects (indirect effects include those arising from lower light levels, modified weather, and over time, departures from normal conditions—and then subsequent impacts) would be of similar significance, at least for some, possibly large, areas. From this perspective, then, continuing to portray the significance of the changes (in particular that there were environmental consequences over and above the direct destruction and fallout, even if the quantitative aspects were different) as “nuclear winter” is at least metaphorically justified, for the term indicates that the resulting conditions would be very hard and difficult to deal with (whether caused by a cooling few degrees or a few tens of degrees, the loss of a crop is the loss of a crop).

My personal opinion is that scientific results are best described, at least to other scientists, using words literally, and I generally think using metaphors should be avoided in scientific discussions. Metaphors can, however, be useful to convey the significance of results to policymakers—and Alan’s papers are aimed at speaking to policymakers as well as scientists. In the cases described in Alan’s papers, which involve nuclear exchanges between mainly low-latitude nuclear-capable nations, I actually wonder, however, whether “winter” is the most appropriate metaphor because “winter” is experienced so differently at low as compared to in mid-latitudes--”drought” might be a better metaphor (caused by the stabilization of the atmosphere resulting from smoke-induced heating aloft).

In any case, this distracting arguing about the label really obscures what the scientific results show, which is that, in addition to the horrific direct effects, nuclear war can lead to significant indirect effects, impacting not only those who are struck by the bombs, but those well beyond (and this is especially important because of the limited food reserves now available around the world—basically the world’s nations don’t seem to store, for example, a full growing season’s worth of grain). Together with all of the other consequences of nuclear war, the studies thus indicate that all nations, whether combatants or not, should have a strong self-interest in ensuring that even a relatively small nuclear exchange does not take place and the leaders of nations holding nuclear weapons should be made aware of this.

Mike MacCracken

14 College Farm Road                   E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu <http://rob...%40envsci.rutgers.edu>

New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551  USA      http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock <http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock>
 On 9/26/2012 6:32 PM, Russell Seitz wrote:
 
 

Here are the time-temperature curves of the 1983 'nuclear winter ' model, and those  of Robock et al. 2007 , superimposed on the same scale:

 
 

 
http://s1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/RussellSeitz/?action=view&current=TTAPSROBOCK.jpg <http://s1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/RussellSeitz/?action=view&current=TTAPSROBOCK.jpg>
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 


 
 

 

 
 

 
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[Alan Robock]

Dear Albert,

The way that nuclear attacks could change climate is because of the smoke from the fires they would start.  These black soot particles could be lofted into the stratosphere, persist for years, and absorb sunlight, making it cold, dark, and dry at Earth's surface.  The amount of smoke determines the size of the climate response.  It has nothing to do with dust or direct effects of the explosions, as horrible as they would be.

   
Alan

Alan Robock, Professor II (Distinguished Professor)
  Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
  Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program
  Associate Director, Center for Environmental Prediction
Department of Environmental Sciences              Phone: +1-848-932-5751

Rutgers University                                  Fax: +1-732-932-8644

14 College Farm Road                   E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551  USA      http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock

[eugg...@comcast.net]

Does this mean that manufacturing soot and lofting controlled amounts into the stratosphere would be a viable geoengineering technique? How long would the soot persist? Is it better or safer than lofting sulfates? Do massive forest fires produce enough soot for cooling? Is there data? During WWII there was massive fires produced by fire-bombing Hamburg, Dresden, etc. and nuking the two Japanese cities. Is there any data on subsequent cooling?

 

In any case most have probably seen the related soot article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling   Predictions have been all over the place.

 

-gene

---

[Andrew Lockley]

This paper was already on the list archives, posted quite recently.

I trust it will answer your question Eugene

Kravitz, B., A. Robock, D. T. Shindell, and M. A. Miller
(2012), Sensitivity of stratospheric geoengineering with black
carbon to aerosol size and altitude of injection, J. Geophys. Res.,
117, D09203, doi:10.1029/2011JD017341.

A

[Russell Seitz]

The  empirical fate of smoke from fires on the ground is a more complex matter than simply pasting it into a model's vertical divisions - when it comes to vertical transport , the models in question rely more  on the taste of those programming them than natural history. This is an important failing because in reality the vertical distribution can reverse the sign of the radiative forcing effects, leading to surface warming rather than cooling.

In the 27 years since 'nuclear winter's meltdown as a Cold War game changer, soot has morphed into a contemporary part of the global warming problem --

See Rind  et al JGR doi 10.1029/2004JD005103, 2005

and Cappa et al, Science 31 August 2012:  DOI: 10.1126/science.1223447

who note : Atmospheric black carbon (BC) warms Earth’s climate, and its reduction has been targeted for near-term climate change mitigation.