Since the war between Russia y Ukraine at the end of February, the fear of a possible nuclear war increased, since in April the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrovassured that the risk of a confrontation of this type was “real”.
In that sense, researchers at Louisiana State University conducted different simulations of regional and global nuclear wars to evaluate the consequences that these would have on Earth, which resulted in a “little Ice Age” being caused, according to the Bloomberg Line portal.
Currently, nine countries in the world have control of 13,000 nuclear weapons, according to figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. And although some nations stand out more than others such as the United States, Russia and China, the investigation concludes that “it does not matter” who is attacked with this type of weapon, since the impacts would be the same throughout the planet.
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What were the scenarios evaluated?
The simulated scenarios were diverse, but the researchers evaluated a nuclear war between the United States and Russia where some 4,400 100-kiloton nuclear weapons (1 kiloton equals 1,000 tons) would be used to bomb cities and industrial areas. The results were “fires that ejected more than 330 billion pounds of smoke and black carbon” by absorbing sunlight, directed into the upper atmosphere.
A smaller simulation was also run between India and Pakistan. That test envisioned a scenario in which they decided to attack each other with 500 100-kiloton nuclear weapons, which would result in spewing 11 million to 103 billion pounds of smoke and soot into the upper atmosphere.
In any case considered, the science team indicated that the release of smoke and soot would block sunlight on Earth and large-scale food crops would be lost.
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Also, in the first month after a nuclear explosion, temperatures would drop to -10.56 degrees Celsius, “a greater temperature change than in the last Ice Age.”
“It doesn’t matter who bombs who. It can be India and Pakistan or NATO and Russia. Once the smoke is released into the upper atmosphere, it spreads globally and affects everyone,” he said. Cheryl Harrisonlead author and assistant professor in the LSU Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences and the Center for Computing and Technology.
How long would recovery take after a nuclear war?
Simulations indicate that, after this type of nuclear confrontation, the temperature of the oceans would drop rapidly, which is why sea ice could extend up to six million square miles and six feet deep in some basins. This would block key ports for global trade such as Tianjin in Beijing, Copenhagen and St. Petersburg.
The entity details that in the largest scenario of a nuclear war, that of the US and Russia, the oceans would take decades to recover on the surface and hundreds of years for the depths to thaw, while changes in the ice Arctic seawater could last thousands of years and trigger a ‘little nuclear Ice Age’.
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the co-author Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, explained: “Nuclear war has dire consequences for everyone. World leaders have used our studies previously as an impetus to end the nuclear arms race in the 1980s, and five years ago to pass a treaty at the United Nations to ban nuclear weapons.”
“We hope that this new study will encourage more nations to ratify the Ban Treaty,” he added.