People send me stuff.
Never mind the other aerosol sources, it was the Fat Man and Little Boy.
From the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics April 2011, these claims:
- Atmospheric nuclear explosions induced the stagnation in global warming in the mid 20th century.
- Atmospheric nuclear explosions can be regarded as full-scale in situ tests for nuclear winter.
- Global warming will be better predicted by considering atmospheric nuclear explosions’ effects.
The paper is: Fujii, Yoshiaki, 2011: The role of atmospheric nuclear explosions on the stagnation of global warming in the mid 20th century
Here’s the abstract, the HadCRUT -vs- nukes graph follows:
“This study suggests that the cause of the stagnation in global warming in the mid 20th century was the atmospheric nuclear explosions detonated between 1945 and 1980. The estimated GST drop due to fine dust from the actual atmospheric nuclear explosions based on the published simulation results by other researchers (a single column model and Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model) has served to explain the stagnation in global warming. Atmospheric nuclear explosions can be regarded as full-scale in situ tests for nuclear winter. The non-negligible amount of GST drop from the actual atmospheric explosions suggests that nuclear winter is not just a theory but has actually occurred, albeit on a small scale. The accuracy of the simulations of GST by IPCC would also be improved significantly by introducing the influence of fine dust from the actual atmospheric nuclear explosions into their climate models; thus, global warming behavior could be more accurately predicted.”
Somewhere, Carl Sagan is laughing.
Here’s a composite overlay graph of HadCRUT3 global temperatures from 1945-2010 via WoodforTrees.org onto the bar graph of known nuclear explosions for the same period from Wikipedia:
If the premise is true, one wonders how Trinity, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima started the sharp downtrend in global temperature in 1945, followed by Crossroads in 1946. These were all quite small in comparison to what followed.
Here’s the list of nuclear tests.
UPDATE: As Mike Lorrey points out in comments, after the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, nuclear tests were conducted underground. How then did the cooling of the 1970’s occur if the premise presented in this peer reviewed paper is true? I’ve updated the graph above to reflect this.
So what’s caused the global temp stagnation we have been experiencing for the last 10 to 12 years ?????
This summer, instead of dusting and vacuuming the house I’ll connect the vacuum’s hose to the exhaust port and blow all the dust toward the windows every day to keep the nasty sunshine from coming in and heating up the place.
It’s actually a very interesting paper to read! However, I doubt that aerial testing or sub-surface testing would have generated enough particulates to impact climate in any meaningful way. Sagan’s “nuclear winter” was from widespread fires as well as dust kicked up, these tests would have produced very little particulates.
I remember those Cold War nuke test days well, my mom wouldn’t allow us to lick icicles, snowflakes etc. because of concern over fallout (this would be about 1960).
So the world won’t cool over the next few years then?????
@-Eric Gisin says:
April 5, 2011 at 10:03 am
“Someone should look up the amount of space dust that falls from the heavens every year. I think it’s around million times that of an H-bomb.”
Well if someone did look it up they would find that the commonly quoted figure is between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes a year.
For that to be a million times the amount from a H-bomb the nuclear fireball would have to loft less than the weight of a person into the stratosphere.
In fact if the bomb yield is over a mega-tonne a ground burst will generate thousands of tonnes of fine dust which because the mushroom cloud reaches the stratosphere (unlike most volcanoes) will get there in significant amounts.
The only figure I can find in the paper is an estimate (?!) of 26,000 tonnes of fine dust from a ground burst.
If this is within an order of magnitude then it indicates one surface test may generate a similar amount of stratospheric dust as falls from space.
The difference of course is that the space dust is a continual and consistent process that would not generate any sudden trends. There are no detectable significant space dust concentration variations that the Earth’s orbit transits.
While the nuclear tests were a short, concentrated ADDITIONAL source of stratospheric dust…..
“Claim: nuclear tests stopped global warming in the mid 20th century”
That’s not all that Fat Man and Little Boy stopped……….
This was mentioned in a guest paper on the late John Daly’s website Still Waiting For Greenhouseaabout 10 years ago. Here is the link:
http://www.john-daly.com/bigbangs.htm
@-Ranger Rick says:
April 5, 2011 at 10:23 am
” I still think global warming is caused by Unicorn farts! I wonder how I can “prove” this?”
Its pretty easy. First measure the physical characteristics of unicorn farts (UF) and determine by what physical mechanism they are altering the global energy balance. It is most likely to be either by altering the albedo of the Earth to incoming solar energy or the inverse albedo – emissivity – to outgoing terrestrial energy.
In either case the spectra of energy received at, and energy emitted from, the Earth will change as the amount of UF changes.
If you have a reliable record of the change in UF levels and a matching record of changes in the energy spectra incoming and outgoing you will have ‘proof’ that there is a real, detectable physical process altering the energy balance of the globe in response to changes in UF levels.
If after allowances are made for solar and intrinsic fluctuations and other (nuclear?!) complicating factors the observed warming is commensurate with the energy imbalance caused by the changing UF levels then most of the scientific community will accept your work and it will become the mainstream focus of climate research.
Opposed only by a small minority that seem unable to accept the culpability of UF in all this, and accuse you of trying to impose global unicornuism.
Someone above beat me to the observation that dust storms would have a much greater effect than nuclear tests, particularly when so many after 1963 were underground tests.
Of course, correlation for these people means causation and we all know that global warming has been on going since man invented fire and we just have to identify all of the factors which have countered our effect over time, creating the temperature cycles that we see. You have to understand that some ameliorating cooling factor pops up every 70 years like clockwork and causes cooling, then it goes away and we continue warming. It’s so simple.
Colin says: April 5, 2011 at 5:40 am
EM Smith: “Please, sir, do not slander Druids so! Druids were well known for their keen understanding of nature and fidelity to the data and known mechanism of how things worked.”
Yes, they also roasted people alive in wicker cages. A nasty little habit for which the Romans exterminated the lot of them.
—————————————————————————–
Aw Colin – they had to have something to lighten up with after all that intensive study – give them a break.
Douglas
And another thing Colin
Those Romans were far too moralistic for their own good – look what they did to the early Christians for their beliefs! Hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Cheers
Douglas
Ranger Rick says:
I still think global warming is caused by Unicorn farts! I wonder how I can “prove” this?
RR, you have it backwards. Unicorn farts were keeping the earth cool. All reasonable people (scientists included) agree that Unicorns have been practically non-existent since the beginning of the Holocene. From that, we can conclude that it was their mass extinction that allowed the earth to warm out of the ice age. Since the warming has not been consistent, we can conclude that some may have survived, thereby helping to control warming to some degree. This is borne out by the MWP, which would appear to have been caused by the widespread hunting of Unicorns during that era. After the few remaining Unicorns escaped to what is now the United States, they began breeding again, which ushered in the LIA. Then, as urban growth and industrialization encroached on their new habitat, their numbers dropped again, which likely caused the end of the LIA. Today, it’s just getting worse, since we all know Unicorns are never seen anymore – there must be very few, if any, remaining to control runaway warming.
We must act immediately to find and preserve any remaining Unicorns, and we should begin a Unicorn breeding program right away before it’s too late.
Where do I apply for a grant?
@-Charles Higley says:
April 5, 2011 at 12:11 pm
-“Someone above beat me to the observation that dust storms would have a much greater effect than nuclear tests, particularly when so many after 1963 were underground tests.”-
Dust storms do not put significant amounts of fine dust (sub-micrometer dust) into the stratosphere.
The issue of which surface tests could be responsible for injecting fine dust into the stratosphere is discussed in the paper. China continued with surface tests after 63.
-“Of course, correlation for these people means causation and we all know that global warming has been on going since man invented fire and we just have to identify all of the factors which have countered our effect over time, creating the temperature cycles that we see.”-
For most people the correlation between the eruptions of Agung, El Chichon and Pinatubo and subsequent cooling of the climate is evidence of causation because a known physical mechanism connects the two.
Would you dispute this is evidence that small changes in the contents of the atmosphere can alter the climate ?
Two Papers – “The Role Of Atmospheric Nuclear Explosions On The Stagnation Of Global Warming In The Mid 20th Century” by Fijii 2011″ And “Comets And Climate” By Zecca, Antonio and Luca Chiari 2009
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/two-papers-the-role-of-atmospheric-nuclear-explosions-on-the-stagnation-of-global-warming-in-the-mid-20th-century-by-fijii-2011-and-comets-and-climate-by-zecca-antonio-and-luca-chiari-20/
I still don’t think they have the “nuclear winter” theory completely ironed out.
Recall that in 1990-1991, Dr. Carl “billions and billions” Sagan predicted that if Saddam Hussein set the oil pumps in Kuwait on fire, that there would be a “cooling effect” downwind in Pakistan and/or India, which never happened.
Baxter75 @ur momisugly April 5, 2011 at 1:01 am
You recall correctly.
Ponder the Maunder
Oh, how their tangled web implodes,
When they predict with dull diodes,
Their weakest tea is said to flow,
Like lava to the sea, although
If nukes could truly nudge some numbers,
Increasing grants to number fumblers,
Perhaps some pigs are flying high
Through clouds that can’t be truly measured,
As if science wasn’t mystified
By what’s dismissed as ‘only weather’…
We’ve had periods of rapid cooling many times over the last 10,000 years – did nuclear weapons play any part in these events? Come to that, did man-made CO2?
Let us look at numbers: Cosmic rays are depositing approx. 1 GigaWatt into the atmosphere.This is less than ten pars per trillion or 10**(-8) of the solar power deposited on earth, which is approx. 170 PetaWatt (albedo effects not considered). Nevertheless, cosmic rays are basically the only radiation which produces ions in the upper troposphere, forming areosols. We know that solar intensity variations during solar active times are insufficient to quantitatively explain the parallel trends of global warming and solar activity which occurred up to the 1940ies. Svensmark points out that the generated aerosols can be the nuclei for droplets in cloud formation. During solar inactive times there would be enhanced cloud formation, during active times there would be reduced cloud formation. In my paper, I have followed a different route, looking at variations of terrestric solar irradiance with solar activity.
During solar active times, cosmic ray intensities have been reduced by up to 20 %, which means a reduction in power of approx. 200 MegaWatt.
During post-war times, there have been a total of several 100 Megatons of TNT equivalent deposited into the atmosphere. When we assume 10 Megatons per year, and look up the energy stored in 1 kg of TNT, which is roughly 5 MegaJoule, there is an energy of 50 PetaJoule (5*10**16 Joule) deposited into the atmosphere per year, which is a power of 1.7 GigaWatt. A large fraction of that is ionizing radiation, which, then, had been generating ions and thus aerosols – just like cosmic rays and additionally to them.
Cycle 19 with its maximum around 1960 has been the most active solar cycle in the last century. Nevertheless, global temperatures have dropped.
When you look more closely, you would expect the northern hemisphere to have cooled more than the southern hemisphere, since most tests, especially those of the Soviet Union, have been carried out in the northern hemisphere. And this is indeed the case.
Anthony, are you still laughing?
1962 should have been the coldest ever after the Oct. 1961 Tsar Bomba was lit off.
50 megatons and the cloud circled the N. hemisphere 3 times.
This is yet another attempt by Alarmists to justify the use of Nuclear Weapons to control the Climate. Such ideas are feverishly mad and bereft of guiding principles.
@-Tenuc says:
April 5, 2011 at 2:50 pm
“We’ve had periods of rapid cooling many times over the last 10,000 years – did nuclear weapons play any part in these events? Come to that, did man-made CO2?”
No.
Can you provide any dates of these ‘many’ rapid cooling events that are NOT correlated with volcanic events?
But then when you stop tests it should rebound back as is the situation in volcanic eruptions.
From CRS, Dr.P.H. on April 5, 2011 at 11:05 am:
And you listened to her, right? You should have, she was right about avoiding the yellow snow!
So we are now in Tom Lehrer territory, “Let’s drop the big one now”
sunderland steve says:
April 5, 2011 at 10:32 am
It is called ocean surface salt changes that started in the late 1960’s. Blamed on global warming BUT there was no massive evaporation to this claim.
So, it has to be pressure changes that have been declining since 1948.