NASA scientists performed a test to find out how nuclear winter would affect the environment and modeled a war involving one hundred Hiroshima-grade bombs, which, as a scary side note, is around 0.03 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal. The scientists predicted that the explosions and subsequent fires would move about five million metric tons of black carbon into the lowest layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. The odd thing is that in NASA climate models, this black carbon absorbed solar heat, which was predicted to reduce average global temperatures by 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit for two to three years after the black carbon took over the sky. Even after ten years, NASA’s climate model predicted that the global average temperate would be 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than what it was before the nuclear war.
Of course, agriculture wouldn’t be doing so well, there’d be about ten percent less precipitation for up to four years after the the war, and the ozone would be decreasing more quickly. Oh, and you know those human things? They wouldn’t be doing to well either.
Another interesting tidbit NASA found from their morbid research, is that even a regional nuclear conflict, rather than a global one, would have some kind of negative global impact.
(National Geographic via The Reference Frame)
