Unprecedented warming in equatorial Pacific Ocean could last up to seven years
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
A nuclear war could trigger an unprecedented El Niño-like warming episode in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, slashing algal populations by 40 percent and likely lowering the fish catch, according to a Rutgers-led study.
The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, shows that turning to the oceans for food if land-based farming fails after a nuclear war is unlikely to be a successful strategy – at least in the equatorial Pacific.
“In our computer simulations, we see a 40 percent reduction in phytoplankton (algae) biomass in the equatorial Pacific, which would likely have downstream effects on larger marine organisms that people eat,” said lead author Joshua Coupe, a post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Environmental Sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Previous research has shown that global cooling following a nuclear war could lead to crop failure on land, and our study shows we probably can’t rely on seafood to help feed people, at least in that area of the world.”
Scientists studied climate change in six nuclear war scenarios, focusing on the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The scenarios include a major conflict between the United States and Russia and five smaller wars between India and Pakistan. Such wars could ignite enormous fires that inject millions of tons of soot (black carbon) into the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight and disrupting Earth’s climate.
With an Earth system model to simulate the six scenarios, the scientists showed that a large-scale nuclear war could trigger an unprecedented El Niño-like event lasting up to seven years. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation is the largest naturally occurring phenomenon that affects Pacific Ocean circulation, alternating between warm El Niño and cold La Niña events and profoundly influencing marine productivity and fisheries.
During a “nuclear Niño,” scientists found that precipitation over the Maritime Continent (the area between the Indian and Pacific oceans and surrounding seas) and equatorial Africa would be shut down, largely because of a cooler climate.
More importantly, a nuclear Niño would shut down upwelling of deeper, colder waters along the equator in the Pacific Ocean, reducing the upward movement of nutrients that phytoplankton – the base of the marine food web – need to survive. Moreover, the diminished sunlight after a nuclear war would drastically reduce photosynthesis, stressing and potentially killing many phytoplankton.
“Turning to the sea for food after a nuclear war that dramatically reduces crop production on land seems like it would be a good idea,” said co-author Alan Robock, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers-New Brunswick. “But that would not be a reliable source of the protein we need, and we must prevent nuclear conflict if we want to safeguard our food and Earth’s environment.”
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Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Colorado, Boulder; Australian Antarctic Partnership Program; University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley; and National Center for Atmospheric Research contributed to the study.
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That’s really as far as you need to read. As usual, a bunch of assumptions (mostly wrong) are fed into a computer, which is then used to run “simulations” which are what would happen IF all of the input assumptions were correct. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
More to the point, worrying about an El Nino after a nuclear war is kind of like worrying about whether falling debris will clog the drain in the kitchen sink after the house burns to the ground – with everybody in it.
We seriously need to stop sending taxpayer money to academia.
Where do they get these idiots? “Nuclear war”? What part of total destruction of the planet don’t they understand?
I see they are still trying to push the nuclear winter nonsense.
The belief that large scale fires are capable of injecting soot into the stratosphere was demolished decades ago.
Is there a reason to worry about seafood supply after humans are wiped out?
Seems like an exercise in futility, to me.
I think dying from the radiation poisoning would be a big concern for those that managed to survive the actual blasts.
To a large degree, the only people who died from radiation poisoning in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were those who drank the black rain that followed the blasts.
So nuclear winter is out in favor of nuclear warming?
Actually – that’s a LOT scarier than “global warming”, so, why not?
Wild claim – Nuclear war could destroy earth’s human population, making adverse impact on crops irrelevant.
No size limit to the vague words, “large-scale nuclear war“?
That describing a huge fudge factor input into their models.
Vague waffle words without definition puts this into the ‘we fudged a whole lot of mega explosions and then modeled our fantasies’ world of non-reality.
All predicated on some fantasia idea of why, where and how a nuclear war is waged, ala early 1950s anti-nuclear movies.
next, they’ll have Japan suffering dozens of Godzilla attacks from the oceans.
I get the impression none of these geniuses ever bothered to calculate just how much energy is encompassed by El Ninos versus their alleged nuclear war. it’s all self satisfation make believe scenarios.
Nor do these yahoos have any concept regarding just how El Ninos are actually formed.
It seems like what they have shown is that the climate system is incredibly resistant to human interference. Our most powerful and nightmarish destructive weapons will disrupt climate and lead to the fabled “nuclear winter” …. but climate feedbacks will kick in and induce a persistent El Nino: an effect where heat built up in the oceans is released to warm the atmosphere.
So why are we worrying about a hypothesized warming so small it can not be distinguished from natural variability?
Why worry about reduce ocean food production. There will not be any humans left for farm, it will soon recover.
Thank you for your concern and input Alan but just at present we’re trying to prioritize resourcing for Covid or the climactic dooming but we will get around to these second order problems at some stage.