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The Endangered Global Atmosphere
Published in Stanley Manahan, Environmental Chemistry, 2017
Nuclear winter is a term used to describe a catastrophic atmospheric effect that might occur after a massive exchange of nuclear firepower between major powers as well as natural phenomena, particularly huge volcanic eruptions and asteroid impact, which would have much the same effect. The heat from the nuclear blasts and from resulting fires would cause powerful updrafts carrying sooty combustion products to stratospheric regions. This would result in several years of much lower temperatures and freezing temperatures even during summertime. There are several reasons for such an effect. First of all, the highly absorbent, largely black particulate matter would absorb solar radiation high in the atmosphere so that it would not reach Earth’s surface. Cooling would also occur from a phenomenon opposite to that of the greenhouse effect. That is because outgoing infrared radiation from particles high in the atmosphere would have to penetrate relatively much less of the atmosphere and, therefore, would be exposed to much less infrared-absorbing water vapor and carbon dioxide gas. This would deprive the lower atmosphere of the warming effect of outgoing infrared radiation and would mean that less infrared would be re-radiated from the atmosphere back to Earth’s surface. The cooling would also inhibit the evaporation of water, thereby reducing the amount of infrared-absorbing water vapor in the atmosphere and slowing the process by which particulate matter is scavenged from the atmosphere by rain. In addition to the direct suffering caused, starvation of millions of people would result from crop failures accompanying years of nuclear winter.
The Endangered Global Atmosphere
Published in Stanley E. Manahan, Environmental Chemistry, 2022
Nuclear winter is a term used to describe a catastrophic atmospheric effect that might occur after a massive exchange of nuclear firepower between major powers as well as natural phenomena, particularly huge volcanic eruptions and asteroid impact, which would have much the same effect. The heat from the nuclear blasts and from resulting fires would cause powerful updrafts carrying sooty combustion products to stratospheric regions. This would result in several years of much lower temperatures and freezing temperatures even during summertime. There are several reasons for such an effect. First of all, the highly absorbent, largely black particulate matter would absorb solar radiation high in the atmosphere so that it would not reach the Earth's surface. Cooling would also occur from a phenomenon opposite to that of the greenhouse effect. That is because outgoing infrared radiation from particles high in the atmosphere would have to penetrate relatively much less of the atmosphere and, therefore, would be exposed to much less infrared-absorbing water vapor and carbon dioxide gas. This would deprive the lower atmosphere of the warming effect of outgoing infrared radiation and would mean that less infrared would be re-radiated from the atmosphere back to the Earth's surface. The cooling would also inhibit the evaporation of water, thereby reducing the amount of infrared-absorbing water vapor in the atmosphere and slowing the process by which particulate matter is scavenged from the atmosphere by rain. In addition to the direct suffering caused, starvation of millions of people would result from crop failures accompanying years of nuclear winter.
Using correlations between observed equivalent black carbon and aerosol size distribution to derive size resolved BC mass concentration: a method applied on long-term observations performed at Zeppelin station, Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard
Published in Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology, 2021
Peter Tunved, Roxana S. Cremer, Paul Zieger, Johan Ström
Black carbon (BC) is a notoriously difficult aerosol species to characterize and quantify (e.g. Andreae et al. 2006; Petzold et al. 2013), which is why each property reported about these particles is primarily defined by the measurement technique used. Research surrounding these particles has been conducted with respect to air quality and health related problems since the 1950s (Novakov and Rosen 2013), but BC has also been studied with respect to post nuclear war scenarios of so-called Nuclear winter (e.g. Crutzen and Birks 1982). In this extreme case it is predicted that smoke from extensive fires will block incoming the light from the sun, which will cool the surface of the Earth. However, in the ambient atmosphere the mass faction of BC is typically small compared to other aerosol species such as sulfates, nitrates, sea salt, dust, or non-black organic (Seinfeld and Pandis 2016). Nevertheless, despite its minute relative contribution it has been proposed that BC is only second to CO2 in contributing to global climate change (Hansen and Nazarenko 2004; Johnson et al. 2019; Jones et al. 2018). The reason for this is the many possible feedback mechanisms that can be activated if BC change the surface albedo of snow and ice. Different from the Nuclear winter scenarios, BC in the present atmosphere is expected to have a net warming effect on the Earth’s climate system (IPCC: Chlimate Change 2014). Characterizing the ratio between scattering and absorbing aerosols and its evolution over time from long term observation provide necessary knowledge for constraining the radiative forcing of aerosols in General Circulation Models (GCM).