Climate and smoke: an appraisal of nuclear winter (1990)
| Citations: | 11 - 0 self |
BibTeX
@MISC{Turco90climateand,
author = {R. P. Turco and B. Toon and T. P. Ackerman and J. B. Pollack and C. Sagan},
title = {Climate and smoke: an appraisal of nuclear winter},
year = {1990}
}
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Abstract
The latest understanding of nuclear winter is reviewed. Considerable progress has been made in quantifying the production and injection of soot by large-scale fires, the regional and global atmospheric dispersion of the soot, and the resulting physical, environmental, and climatic perturbations. New information has been obtained from laboratory studies, field experiments, and numerical mod-eling on a variety ofscales (plume, mesoscale, and global). For the most likely soot injections from a fill-scale nuclear exchange, three-dimensional climate simulations yield midsummer land temperature decreases that average 100 to 20°C in northern mid-latitudes, with local cooling as large as 35°C, and subfreezing summer temperatures in some regions. Anomalous atmospheric circulations caused by solar heating of soot is found to stabilize the
Keyphrases
nuclear winter three-dimensional climate simulation numerical mod-eling field experiment northern mid-latitudes midsummer land temperature likely soot injection new information anomalous atmospheric circulation large-scale fire fill-scale nuclear exchange climatic perturbation considerable progress variety ofscales solar heating global atmospheric dispersion summer temperature laboratory study local cooling
