EVEN a small nuclear war could have catastrophic environmental and societal consequences, extending the death toll far beyond the number of people killed directly by bombs, says the first comprehensive climatic analysis of such a conflict.
Scientists say a few dozen Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons exchanged between India and Pakistan, for example, could produce a pall of smoke that would encircle the Earth, causing temperatures to fall worldwide and disrupting food production for millions of people.
Owen Toon, an atmospheric researcher at the University of Colorado, told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Monday that although a small nuclear exchange might not trigger a "nuclear winter" that would wipe out all life, it could cause as much death as was once predicted for a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union.
"These results are quite surprising," Dr Toon said. Regional nuclear conflicts "can endanger entire populations" the way it was once thought only worldwide conflict could.
Dr Toon and his co-author Richard Turco, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, were part of the team of scientists that developed the concept of nuclear winter in the 1980s.
The analysis was presented in two papers that dealt with the climatic, atmospheric and social consequences of a regional exchange. The studies were published in the online journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.
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link to www.smh.com.au]
Last Edited by Phennommennonn on 10/08/2011 09:05 PM
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