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 > <(848)%20932-5751> > Rutgers University E-mail: > [email protected] > 14 College Farm Road http://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock > New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 ☮ https://twitter.com/AlanRobock > > [image: Signature] > > > 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 [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/8d0d8c0a-0f0d-440c-9bb5-f8641560e4a0n%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/8d0d8c0a-0f0d-440c-9bb5-f8641560e4a0n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > > -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/b541017e-b87b-4492-b840-91e39d0b0601n%40googlegroups.com.
