Talk:Nuclear winter

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Why no real world example?[edit]

If this effect(soot getting to the stratosphere) "occurs more frequently than previously thought" according to Smoke in the Stratosphere: What Wildfires have Taught Us About Nuclear Winter[1] then why don't we have a real world example of the most extreme soot-generated-"winter" event ever to have occurred naturally, presented within the article?

References

  1. ^ Fromm, M.; Stocks, B.; Servranckx, R.; et al. (2006). "Smoke in the Stratosphere: What Wildfires have Taught Us About Nuclear Winter". Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union. Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union. 87 (52 Fall Meet. Suppl.): Abstract U14A–04. Bibcode:2006AGUFM.U14A..04F.

The above paper argues that a "a new look at old [ world average temperature ] archives" is warranted given that soot gets to the stratosphere more frequently than previously assumed. Judging from the context, this "new look" would attempt to match lasting occurrences of anomalous temperature drops to wildfire firestorm events, but since its publication in 2006 the authors of the paper have, as far as I've been able to determine, seemingly gone dark and not followed up on this line of study.

The temperature records graphed for the last 140 years is found here alongside the stratospheric sulfate aerosols,[1] Something like the graph as depicted on that page but instead of sulfates, estimated stratospheric soot content, is suggested by the above authors. Sadly such a graph does not appear to ever have been made. Much like the presumably estimated quantity of sulfate aerosols in the graph, being derived from the historical recording of large volcanic eruption events, and I say presumably because in case I'm mistaken, the techniques to directly determine the quantity of sulfates in the stratosphere didn't exist 100 years ago. It seems relatively straightforward to at least get an estimate on the stratospheric soot content given the known records for large firestorm events. So why has this not been done?

References

  1. ^ "Earth Observatory, NASA, Aerosols and Incoming Sunlight (Direct Effects)".

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.251.172.194 (talk • contribs) 16:17 UTC, 29 December 2014

Pinatubo section was removed, as "unrelated"[edit]

However as the very last sentence of this section sums-up why it does relate to fire-formed aerosols, the rationale behind its removal is both unsubstantiated and plainly contradicted by the very text that was removed. Read: This...also naturally results as a product of other aerosols that are not emitted by volcanoes, such as man-made "moderately thick smoke loading" pollution, as the same mechanism, the "aerosol direct radiative effect" is behind both.

Eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and agriculture[edit]

See also: photosynthesis
A Space Shuttle (Mission STS-43) photograph of the Earth over South America taken on August 8, 1991, which captures the double layer of Pinatubo aerosol clouds (dark streaks) above lower cloud tops.

The eruption of the Philippines volcano - Mount Pinatubo in June 1991 ejected roughly 10 km3 (2.4 cu mi) of magma and "17,000,000 metric tons"(17 teragrams) of sulfur dioxide SO2 into the air, introducing ten times as much total SO2 as the 1991 Kuwaiti fires,[1] mostly during the explosive Plinian/Ultra-Plinian event of June 15, 1991, creating a global stratospheric SO2 haze layer which persisted for years. This resulted in the global average temperature dropping by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F).[2] As volcanic ash falls out of the atmosphere rapidly,[3] the negative agricultural effects of the eruption were largely immediate and localized to a relatively small area in close proximity to the eruption, as they were caused by the resulting thick ash cover that resulted.[4][5] Globally however, despite a several-month 5% drop in overall solar irradiation, and a reduction in direct sunlight by 30%,[6] there was no negative impact to global agriculture.[7][8] Surprisingly, a 3-4 year[9] increase in global Agricultural productivity and forestry growth was observed, excepting boreal forest regions.[10]

Under more-or-less direct sunlight, dark shadows that limit photosynthesis are cast onto understorey leaves. Within the thicket, very little light can enter.

The means by which this was discovered, is that initially at the time, a mysterious drop in the rate at which carbon dioxide (CO2) was filling the atmosphere was observed, which is charted in what is known as the "Keeling Curve".[11] This led numerous scientists to assume that this reduction was due to the lowering of the Earth's temperature, and with that, a slow down in plant and soil respiration, indicating a deleterious impact to global agriculture from the volcanic haze layer.[7][12] However upon actual investigation, the reduction in the rate at which carbon dioxide filled the atmosphere did not match up with the hypothesis that plant respiration rates had declined.[13][14] Instead the advantageous anomaly was relatively firmly[15] linked to an unprecedented increase in the growth/net primary production,[16] of global plant life, resulting in the increase of the carbon sink effect of global photosynthesis.[7][17] The mechanism by which the increase in plant growth was possible, was that the 30% reduction of direct sunlight can also be expressed as an increase or "enhancement" in the amount of diffuse sunlight.[7][13][18][19]

Well lit understorey areas due to overcast clouds creating diffuse/soft sunlight conditions, that permits photosynthesis on leaves under the canopy.

With, owing to its intrinsic nature, can illuminate under-canopy leaves permitting more efficient total whole-plant photosynthesis than would otherwise be the case.[7][20] In stark contrast to the effect of totally clear skies and the direct sunlight that results from it, which casts shadows onto understorey leaves, strickly limiting plant photosynthesis to the top canopy layer.[7][21] This increase in global agriculture from the volcanic haze layer also naturally results as a product of other aerosols that are not emitted by volcanoes, such as man-made "moderately thick smoke loading" pollution, as the same mechanism, the "aerosol direct radiative effect" is behind both.[10][22][23]

Professor Fromm and the empirical data[edit]

The Beaver complex fire cloud stem, taken below the cloud cap. Oregon, 2014. An F-15C Eagle accompanies the plane which submitted its photos to NASA.[24]. In total 35,302 acres burnt over a number of days in the area.[25] The 2003 Canberra wildfiress, which produced black hail and the Aug 1 2010 Russian wildfires that Meteorologist Michael Fromm at the Naval Research Laboratory has definitively determined injected aerosols into the stratosphere with the aid of the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite, Terra satellite, Aqua satellite & SAGE III cloud reached 12 kilometers. Fromm notes that "pyrocumulonimbus clouds are probably not unusual",however notably they are not "accounted for in global warming climate models". "Just how frequently pyrocumulonimbus clouds form and how much they contribute to aerosols in the stratosphere are questions that will require more observations to answer." [26]
June 19, 2013 the Colorado West Fork Complex fire lofted smoke plumes as high as 13.5 kilometers (8.4 miles) into the atmosphere. Fromm's use of the Satellite observations also show that smoke reached European airspace by June 24.

Cut down on the repetition of the same papers[edit]

Bearing this in mind: The 1988 Air Force Geophysics Laboratory publication An assessment of global atmospheric effects of a major nuclear war by Muench, H. Stuart et al. contains a chronology and review of the major reports on the nuclear winter hypothesis from 1983-86. In general these reports arrive at similar conclusions as they are based on the same "assumptions, the same basic data" with minor model-code differences "to arrive at the same answer". They skip the modeling steps of assessing the possibility of fire and the initial fire plumes and instead start the modeling process with a "spatially uniform" "soot cloud" which has found its way into the atmosphere.[27]

With that in mind, is there any objections to tabulating the results of the various papers and only giving them ink when they are novel in some way that is not possible to convey in the proposed table?

External links modified (January 2018)[edit]

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New subsection: Critical response to the more modern papers[edit]

The criticism section is rather long and much of it of mainly historical interest about now ancient papers from the 1980s. I thought it would help to do a new section. No editing, just added a subsection header. Robert Walker (talk) 17:39, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Robert Walker, if you feel like doing some more editing, could you include the above Naval Lab studies/the pictures. I've been meaning to do that, along with adding the Hiroshima-firestorm cloud photo below, as a way of communicating the comparison/similarity. I mailed amateur historian Coster-Mullen about this cloud and my suspicions of what it actually was. All those hours researching firestorms, nuclear winter and watching declassified videos on nuclear explosions, all of it finally comes in useful...you use your college email accout, with your name in the username, that account to mail a historian with your reasoning, he reples with : by-gum you know I think you're right this is the firestorm and not the bomb's "mushroom cloud", but there are no references he has ever come across that accurately describe the scene...then less than 5 weeks go by from the end of March to May and he gets his name in the paper and shuns your queries on how the NYtimes just picked up the story, after decades had passed of mis-identification.
Though perhaps this thief of research was all a blessing in a way, as I don't know how I would actually feel about benefiting or profiteering in any way, or making a name for yourself off of, what is essentially other people's tragedy? As the cloud contains tens of thousands of incinerated human ashes. Something that no one seems to write about. Maybe it is only fitting that the one who IDed this photo accurately, is not mentioned in the NYtimes article "the mushroom cloud that wasn't", maybe it is only fitting to go un-recognized and that in just setting the record straight, by giving the undeclared and unrecorded people it holds, some kind of recognition that heretofore they did not have.
Though as I'm too wrapped up with the picture, it's probably best someone else do the editing. To be purely scientific about it, I don't think this specific 2013-2016 IDing that I independently did, is really relevant to the topic of nuclear winter, someone else should do the addition/editing.

Boundarylayer (talk) 16:09, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

For decades this "Hiroshima strike" photo was misidentified as the mushroom cloud of the bomb that formed at c. 08:16.[28][29] However, due to its much greater height, the scene was identified by a researcher in March 2016 as the firestorm-cloud that engulfed the city,[29] a fire that reached its peak intensity some three hours after the bomb.[30]
Boundarylayer (talk) 16:09, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


I modified one sentence to replace some paraphrasing from a Department of Homeland Security paper about nuclear preparedness in cities with a direct quote. In particular, I removed this sentence: "This is not to say that fires won't occur over a large area after a detonation, but rather that the fires would not coalesce and form the stratospheric firestorm plume that the nuclear winter papers require in their climate computer models." This sentence was misleading because it suggested the DHS paper discusses the height of the firestorm plume, which it does not. Rather, that paper was only concentrating on emergency response within the city, and was not making claims about high-altitude atmospheric effects over the larger planet.Jess_Riedel (talk) 16:08, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

  1. ^ John C McCain; Muhammad Sadiq; M Sadiq (1993). The Gulf War Aftermath: An Environmental Tragedy. Springer. p. 60. ISBN 0-792-32278-9.
  2. ^ "Mt. Pinatubo's cloud shades global climate". Science News. Retrieved 2010-03-07.
  3. ^ When Thunderstorms Get Down and Dirty. USGS
  4. ^ Socioeconomic Impacts of the Mount Pinatubo EruptionBy Remigio A. Mercado,1 Jay Bertram T. Lacsamana,1 and Greg L. Pineda11 National Economic and Development Authority, Region III, San Fernando, Pampanga, Philippines
  5. ^ Mt. pinatubo (LK): Biosphere Mt. Pinatubo Cycle A1: Individual response: Biosphere. Larissa Karan
  6. ^ Cooling Following Large Volcanic Eruptions Corrected for the Effect of Diffuse Radiation on Tree Rings. Alan Robock, 2005. See Figure 1 for a graphic of the recorded change in solar iiradiation
  7. ^ a b c d e f Large Volcanic Eruptions Help Plants Absorb More Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere December 10, 2001. NASA
  8. ^ LARGE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS HELP PLANTS ABSORB MORE CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE ATMOSPHERE
  9. ^ The effects and consequences of very large explosive volcanic eruptions DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2006.1814 Published 15 August 2006
  10. ^ a b Evaluating aerosol direct radiative effects on global terrestrial ecosystem carbon dynamics from 2003 to 2010. Chen et al., Tellus B 2014; 66, 21808, Published by the international meteorological institute in Stockholm.
  11. ^ Cooling Following Large Volcanic Eruptions Corrected for the Effect of Diffuse Radiation on Tree Rings. Alan Robock, 2005. See Figure 2 for a record of this
  12. ^ LARGE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS HELP PLANTS ABSORB MORE CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE ATMOSPHERE
  13. ^ a b Roles of volcanic eruptions, aerosols and clouds in global carbon cycle. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #B51A-0194
  14. ^ Response of a Deciduous Forest to the Mount Pinatubo Eruption: Enhanced Photosynthesis. Gu et al., 28 March 2003 Journal of Science Vol 299
  15. ^ Volcanic Eruptions (Biological Impact) -- Summary
  16. ^ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalGarden/ Global Garden gets greener. NASA 2003
  17. ^ LARGE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS HELP PLANTS ABSORB MORE CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE ATMOSPHERE
  18. ^ Cooling Following LargeVolcanic Eruptions Corrected for the Effect of Diffuse Radiation on Tree Rings. Alan Robock, 2005. Figure 1
  19. ^ LARGE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS HELP PLANTS ABSORB MORE CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE ATMOSPHERE
  20. ^ LARGE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS HELP PLANTS ABSORB MORE CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE ATMOSPHERE
  21. ^ LARGE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS HELP PLANTS ABSORB MORE CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE ATMOSPHERE
  22. ^ Impact of atmospheric aerosol light scattering and absorption on terrestrial net primary productivity, Cohan et al. GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES 2002 VOL. 16, NO. 4, 1090, doi:10.1029/2001GB001441
  23. ^ Direct observations of the effects of aerosol loading on net ecosystem CO2 exchanges over different landscapes. Niyogi et al. Geophysical Research Letters Volume 31, Issue 20, October 2004 doi:10.1029/2004GL020915
  24. ^ Evolution of Pyrocumulus over California August 6, 2014
  25. ^ Beaver Complex
  26. ^ Russian Firestorm: Finding a Fire Cloud from Space
  27. ^ An assessment of global atmospheric effects of a major nuclear war pg 3-10
  28. ^ "A Photo-Essay on the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki". University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Retrieved December 4, 2016.
  29. ^ a b Broad, William J. (May 23, 2016). "The Hiroshima Mushroom Cloud That Wasn't". The New York Times. Retrieved December 4, 2016.
  30. ^ Toon et al. 2007, p. 1994.
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