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: [email protected]
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
On 9/30/2012 11:56 AM, Veli Albert Kallio 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: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
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
On 9/27/12 8:49 AM, "Fred Zimmerman" <[email protected]
<http://wfz%40nimblebooks.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
<[email protected] <http://russellseitz%40gmail.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 report/The 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:
[email protected] <http://rob...%40envsci.rutgers.edu>
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA
http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
<http://envsci.rutgers.edu/%7Erobock>
<http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
<http://envsci.rutgers.edu/%7Erobock>>
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¤t=TTAPSROBOCK.jpg
<http://s1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/RussellSeitz/?action=view¤t=TTAPSROBOCK.jpg>
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