As part of the RESILIENCER Project, we are looking at low probability high impact events and their relation to SRM. One important worry in this regards becomes termination shock, most importantly what Baum (2013) calls a "Double Catastrophe" where a global societal collapse caused by one catastrophe then causes termination shock, another catastrophe, which may convert the civilisational collapse into a risk of extinction.
One such initial catastrophe may be nuclear war. Thus, the combination of SRM and nuclear war may be a significant worry. As such, I am posing the question to the google group: what would happen if SRM (either stratospheric or tropospheric- or space based if you want to go there) was terminated due to a nuclear war? What sort of effects would you expect to see? Would the combination worsen the effects of nuclear war or help ameliorate them? How would this differ between SRM types?
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/8d0d8c0a-0f0d-440c-9bb5-f8641560e4a0n%40googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/b541017e-b87b-4492-b840-91e39d0b0601n%40googlegroups.com.
I'm with Alan on this one.
With 3 C warming offset by SAI, if done thoughtfully the society and agriculture would have been adjusting along the way, and then comes nuclear war to disturb that ongoing situation.
And as the SCOPE study on the consequences of nuclear war made
clear, there is the matter of the direct damage. As that report
noted it would take destruction of only a few of the world's
financial centers to collapse international trade of medicines,
seeds, fertilizers, grain and much more (computer chips, coffee).
As we are seeing from the invasion of Ukraine, which is one of the
top exporters of grains and fertilizer, disrupting this producing
area has prospects for causing widespread starvation. For each of
the major grains in international trade, something like 90% comes
from typically five countries or so, with their exports going to
of order 100 countries importing the grain in order to provide
reasonably priced food for their people. And then add sudden
disruption of the weather in these key zones and making it
difficult for nations around the world, global nuclear war would
be overwhelmingly worse.
What would happen to the conditions of the following years might be of theoretical interest, but the consequences of the first months and year would have created such disruption that the society you'd be considering would be almost unimaginably different.
Mike MacCracken
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/419bee77-0d9a-416a-9b38-5fc6f584ba3cn%40googlegroups.com.
Hi All
About nuclear winters. I think that the post war effects of nuclear war with marine cloud brightening in the troposphere will differ from those of stratospheric sulphur.
My understanding is that a large nuclear exchange will produce lots of dust and smoke and so a long period of reduced solar input, more that we might have chosen for global heating. This will initially be concentrated over land. Aerosol in the stratosphere from geoengineering will add to the cooling effect of nuclear weapons, perhaps for a year or more.
But aerosol from marine cloud brightening will initially be over the ocean and will be washed out by the next rain or snow shower and so will add less to the cooling.
We could argue that droughts caused by climate change are likely triggers of conflicts, some of which could lead to nuclear war. Anything which reduces the possibility of drought, such as the result from Stjern et al. below (from doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-621-2018-supplement), should be actively encouraged by everyone worried by post nuclear effects. This was the mean of nine leading climate models following an increase of cloud condensation nuclei by only 50% in ocean regions of low cloud. I am sure that intelligent climate engineers with satellite data feeding quantum computers running “what if ” climate models do even better, especially if they were Norwegian.
Let us hope that the probability of nuclear war is too low to affect decisions about climate control. But large volcanic eruptions are certain and the probability of one in the lifetime of people alive today could easily approach unity.
Alan Robock writes that nobody is suggesting enough stratospheric aerosol to produce 3 K of cooling. I want to suggest that marine cloud brightening might very well be needed to do this amount of cooling in selected regions to save ice, moderate hurricanes or remove an unwanted hot blob. The Twomey equations as explained by Schwarz and Slingo show that this would be quite possible. The 50% increase of the Stjern work gave 4 K over the Arctic. The change in aerosol concentration needed for this are given in the diagram below.
Before the Reagan-Gorbachev agreement I worked on an idea which gave a mathematical certainty that two jealous rival superpowers would BOTH believe that they had screwed each other as they gave up their nuclear weapons. Perceptions of comfort and threat of different weapon systems are not the same. Both sides would write a list of all their nuclear inventory with a percentage number for their view of the comfort value of each weapon. Side A would agree to give up any small fraction of their inventory chosen by Side B if the Side B gave up the same small fraction which seemed most threatening in the view of Side A. The Pershing missile could reach Moscow from Germany in 8 minutes looks much more dangerous than something launched from a submarine. After each round each side could adjust their numbers and then select their next choices. The logic is the same as discussions about jealous children sharing a cake with an uneven mix of cherries and icing. If you are worried about Putin please bounce this off your senator.
Breathe safely.
Stephen
From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Gideon Futerman
Sent: 26 July 2022 16:21
To: geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [geo] Nuclear Winter and SRM (including termination shock)
This email was sent to you by someone outside the University.
You should only click on links or attachments if you are certain that the email is genuine and the content is safe.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/419bee77-0d9a-416a-9b38-5fc6f584ba3cn%40googlegroups.com.
The timescales of response to turning off SRM are overwhelmingly dominated by climate system time constants, and not by the residence time of aerosols used for SAI or MCB. There’s no question about the sign of the effect (that the termination shock from MCB would be more rapid, which in this context would be a good thing, and in other contexts a bad thing), but I would expect that’ll be a pretty small difference.
Regardless, at least in the first couple of years, the delta-T from nuclear winter will be smaller if at the same time SRM is being turned off, so initially the climate impacts are reduced if the nuclear winter occurred in a world with SRM. And I agree with what’s been said before – if the nuclear war is sufficiently bad that one can’t restart SRM in a few years, then my guess would be that the real problem is the nuclear war…
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/DB7PR05MB5692CAB0480740733454C329A7949%40DB7PR05MB5692.eurprd05.prod.outlook.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CH2PR04MB6936C548913AF5CD22B5C5428F949%40CH2PR04MB6936.namprd04.prod.outlook.com.
On 26 Jul 2022, at 17:20, Gideon Futerman <ggfut...@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Dr Robock,
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/419bee77-0d9a-416a-9b38-5fc6f584ba3cn%40googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/ED25BC44-E1F4-450C-B331-D72738754967%40gmail.com.
There is a real question about how much smoke an India-Pakistan conflict could generate and loft. So, in a normal scenario, one shoots one's weapons at the other sides offensive weapons (missiles, control systems, maybe fuel storage locations, etc.) and not clear (at least to me) that this could create a hot enough fire to really loft much smoke--lighting the Kuwait oil fields did not really loft much, in part due to the typical inversion that prevails. Were the cities attacked, it is also just not clear there is enough burnable material to loft smoke, given wood is not a typical building material, at least in areas I have visited. And a war during the monsoon season would also not seem likely to loft much smoke. Might one hae enough to affect the weather--perhaps, but the thermal capacity of the oceans is very large and I'd suggest it would take a lot more smoke than that to cause a significant effect.
Mike MacC
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAJ3C-05CshBMOaA3o_CssiBTLd%2BsGfth6BfX2-uob%3D5Xa%3DhDzA%40mail.gmail.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAK73TM%2BA0dvOcYEOQd1_CKFE6YM1KZjTSQUo2HvZqhvRY4HMUw%40mail.gmail.com.
Dear Gideon,
I think that you are grabbing the wrong end of the stick.
The problem is that once nations have nuclear arsenals and are engaged in nuclear weapons races which require competing military industrial complexes and permanently expanding economies to fund these then there is an unstoppable commitment to increasing fossil fuel consumption. Ironically, the worse that climate change gets, the more nations will seek protection under their nuclear umbrellas and the more nations will resort to conventional war.
Thus nuclear weapons and the arms races they drive become the biggest cause of climate change and the resulting climate change lowers the threshold for nuclear war, as Renaud points out below. Once we have nuclear war, as everyone has pointed out debates about SRM are irrelevant.
The question now is how do we link security and climate change commitments in a world where competing nations have all adopted first strike responses with nuclear weapons. My view is that unless we have a modern day Baruch Agreement to do this will not succeed and this is not even on any agenda. My past calculations using game theory and which I have supported with modelling indicate the chance of success without such an agreement is 1E-63. That is considerably less than finding a single atom on the plant in a random selection.
Under this interpretation, commitments to high carbon emissions and eventual nuclear war are extremely high probability outcomes with current political system.
Kevin
Sent from Mail for Windows
From: Gideon Futerman
Sent: 27 July 2022 12:44
To: geoengineering
Subject: Re: [geo] Nuclear Winter and SRM (including termination shock)
Hi all,
On 7/26/2022 10:59 AM, Gideon Futerman wrote:
Dear Alan Robock,
When you say overwhelm, is the suggestion here that the increase in radiative forcing from the termination of aerosol injection would be entirely negligable compared to the nuclear winter scenario?
If SAI were masking 3K of warming, and you got a nuclear winter driven cooling of say 7K, surely the impact of the termination of SAI would not be negligable, even if it would be significantly less than the cooling of nuclear winter (ie you still get a nuclear winter)? I am trying to work out if the "double catastrophe" as Baum calls it actually applies in the nuclear winter scenario. So the question of whether the removal of the contribution of SAI to radiative forcing (by termination) makes the nuclear winter (and the resulting warming afterwards) worse, less bad or is entirely negligable is important.
Moreover might sunlight removal effects be important in the short term, particularly if it were a relatively high SAI radiative forcing and (relatively) minor nuclear winter (say about 6K of cooling)? Given up to 50% of sulfate aerosols remain in the stratosphere up to 8 months after termination, would the added impact of the sulfate aerosols on top of the significantly more soot aerosols have an effect of sunlight available for photosynthesis, so increase impact on food production in the early days of the nuclear winter? Or would this simply be negligable in the face of the radiation reduction from even a relatively minor nuclear winter?
Kind Regards
Gideon
On Tuesday, 26 July 2022 at 15:20:44 UTC+1 Alan Robock wrote:
Dear Gideon,
A nuclear war would be orders of magnitude worse than any impacts of SAI or termination. Soot from fires ignited by nuclear attacks on cities and industrial areas would last for many years, and would overwhelm any impacts from shorter lived sulfate aerosols. Of course the impacts depend on how much soot, but a war between the US and Russia could produce a nuclear winter. For more information on our work and the consequences of nuclear war, please visit http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/
Alan Robock
Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
14 College Farm Road http://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 ☮ https://twitter.com/AlanRobock
On 7/26/2022 10:03 AM, Gideon Futerman wrote:
As part of the RESILIENCER Project, we are looking at low probability high impact events and their relation to SRM. One important worry in this regards becomes termination shock, most importantly what Baum (2013) calls a "Double Catastrophe" where a global societal collapse caused by one catastrophe then causes termination shock, another catastrophe, which may convert the civilisational collapse into a risk of extinction.
One such initial catastrophe may be nuclear war. Thus, the combination of SRM and nuclear war may be a significant worry. As such, I am posing the question to the google group: what would happen if SRM (either stratospheric or tropospheric- or space based if you want to go there) was terminated due to a nuclear war? What sort of effects would you expect to see? Would the combination worsen the effects of nuclear war or help ameliorate them? How would this differ between SRM types?
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/8d0d8c0a-0f0d-440c-9bb5-f8641560e4a0n%40googlegroups.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/b541017e-b87b-4492-b840-91e39d0b0601n%40googlegroups.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/419bee77-0d9a-416a-9b38-5fc6f584ba3cn%40googlegroups.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAK73TM%2BA0dvOcYEOQd1_CKFE6YM1KZjTSQUo2HvZqhvRY4HMUw%40mail.gmail.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/c1ebcb3c-7504-441c-9077-da9049b475d5n%40googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/c1ebcb3c-7504-441c-9077-da9049b475d5n%40googlegroups.com.
Of course there are more minor conflicts possible with less severe outcomes… though if it’s a regional war that doesn’t itself end civilization, I don’t see why one couldn’t restart SRM in a year or two if desired.
Gideon, you write: “I understand why there is aversion to me exploring such risks;” I think you misunderstand everyone’s response here. It isn’t an aversion to exploring them, nor a belief that we don’t need to look at extreme but less likely scenarios, but rather, that this specific risk doesn’t seem to many of us like there’s anything that needs to be explored. That is, my view, and I think others, is that any nuclear war severe enough to result in losing the ability to even restart SRM is so severe that the nuclear war + termination isn’t appreciably worse than the nuclear war itself.
I 100% agree with the need to think through low probability but high impact possibilities.
d
From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Gilles de Brouwer
Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2022 11:11 PM
To: ggfut...@gmail.com
Cc: Daniele Visioni <daniele...@gmail.com>; geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [geo] Nuclear Winter and SRM (including termination shock)
FYI Updated nuclear winter analysis is so much worse than SAI that it's pointless to consider.
On 7/26/2022 10:59 AM, Gideon Futerman wrote:
Dear Alan Robock,
When you say overwhelm, is the suggestion here that the increase in radiative forcing from the termination of aerosol injection would be entirely negligable compared to the nuclear winter scenario?
If SAI were masking 3K of warming, and you got a nuclear winter driven cooling of say 7K, surely the impact of the termination of SAI would not be negligable, even if it would be significantly less than the cooling of nuclear winter (ie you still get a nuclear winter)? I am trying to work out if the "double catastrophe" as Baum calls it actually applies in the nuclear winter scenario. So the question of whether the removal of the contribution of SAI to radiative forcing (by termination) makes the nuclear winter (and the resulting warming afterwards) worse, less bad or is entirely negligable is important.
Moreover might sunlight removal effects be important in the short term, particularly if it were a relatively high SAI radiative forcing and (relatively) minor nuclear winter (say about 6K of cooling)? Given up to 50% of sulfate aerosols remain in the stratosphere up to 8 months after termination, would the added impact of the sulfate aerosols on top of the significantly more soot aerosols have an effect of sunlight available for photosynthesis, so increase impact on food production in the early days of the nuclear winter? Or would this simply be negligable in the face of the radiation reduction from even a relatively minor nuclear winter?
Kind Regards
Gideon
On Tuesday, 26 July 2022 at 15:20:44 UTC+1 Alan Robock wrote:
Dear Gideon,
A nuclear war would be orders of magnitude worse than any impacts of SAI or termination. Soot from fires ignited by nuclear attacks on cities and industrial areas would last for many years, and would overwhelm any impacts from shorter lived sulfate aerosols. Of course the impacts depend on how much soot, but a war between the US and Russia could produce a nuclear winter. For more information on our work and the consequences of nuclear war, please visit http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/
Alan Robock
Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
14 College Farm Road http://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 ☮ https://twitter.com/AlanRobock
On 7/26/2022 10:03 AM, Gideon Futerman wrote:
As part of the RESILIENCER Project, we are looking at low probability high impact events and their relation to SRM. One important worry in this regards becomes termination shock, most importantly what Baum (2013) calls a "Double Catastrophe" where a global societal collapse caused by one catastrophe then causes termination shock, another catastrophe, which may convert the civilisational collapse into a risk of extinction.
One such initial catastrophe may be nuclear war. Thus, the combination of SRM and nuclear war may be a significant worry. As such, I am posing the question to the google group: what would happen if SRM (either stratospheric or tropospheric- or space based if you want to go there) was terminated due to a nuclear war? What sort of effects would you expect to see? Would the combination worsen the effects of nuclear war or help ameliorate them? How would this differ between SRM types?
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/8d0d8c0a-0f0d-440c-9bb5-f8641560e4a0n%40googlegroups.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/b541017e-b87b-4492-b840-91e39d0b0601n%40googlegroups.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/419bee77-0d9a-416a-9b38-5fc6f584ba3cn%40googlegroups.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAK73TM%2BA0dvOcYEOQd1_CKFE6YM1KZjTSQUo2HvZqhvRY4HMUw%40mail.gmail.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAGQ2tEqL6%2BWSDBBQZnGjVwgPLz81mW7-hMjuRih_e6u9naRGcw%40mail.gmail.com.
All of the above, with qualifiers… yes the climatic response would be different, but personally I think 6B dead is so bad that whether it’s 6.01 or 6.1 or 6.5 isn’t something that I feel matters particularly (nor do I think it is particularly answerable). What decisions would depend on the answer to that question?
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CH2PR04MB6936EDB3B5D153A79663B8D38F979%40CH2PR04MB6936.namprd04.prod.outlook.com.
I agree that the sign of the effect is unclear in addition to the magnitude, that is, nuclear winter + termination is “better” at first than nuclear winter alone, but “worse” afterwards if it is impossible to restart; that of course is all contingent on how bad the nuclear winter is, how much cooling is being offset, and your beliefs about how the use of SRM does or doesn’t affect mitigation (that is, the circumstances in which termination materially affects outcomes are those in which SRM is being used to offset significant warming – so from a risk perspective, if the counterfactual is that much warmer world, or the counterfactual a world that had more mitigation, is essential).
I agree that as researchers we should try to inform decisions, and hence risks, and be responsive to stakeholder concerns. In this case, I think the *much* bigger influence of SRM on nuclear winter comes from whether it increases or decreases the risks of nuclear war, and what we can do in terms of governance to affect that…
Aerosol emissions from spaceflight activities play a small but increasing role in the background stratospheric aerosol population. Rockets used by the global launch industry emit black carbon (BC) particles directly into the stratosphere where they accumulate, absorb solar radiation, and warm the surrounding air. We model the chemical and dynamical response of the atmosphere to northern mid-latitude rocket BC emissions. We initially examine emissions at a rate of 10 Gg per year, which is an order of magnitude larger than current emissions, but consistent with extrapolations of space traffic growth several decades into the future. We also perform runs at 30 and 100 Gg per year in order to better delineate the atmosphere's response to rocket BC emissions. We show that a 10 Gg/yr rocket BC emission increases stratospheric temperatures by as much as 1.5 K in the stratosphere. Changes in global circulation also occur. For example, the annual subtropical jet wind speeds slow down by as much as 5 m/s, while a 10%–20% weakening of the overturning circulation occurs in the northern hemisphere during multiple seasons. Warming temperatures lead to a ozone reduction in the northern hemisphere by as much as 16 DU in some months. The climate response increases in a near linear fashion when looking at larger 30 and 100 Gg emission scenarios. Comparing the amplitude of the atmospheric response using different emission rates provides insight into stratospheric adjustment and feedback mechanisms. Our results show that the stratosphere is sensitive to relatively modest BC injections.