Will humans achieve nuclear winter ? Still difficult to achieve?
The extraordinary infrasonic wave produced by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 15, 1991 was recorded by the infrasound observation system located 2770 kilometers northeast of the volcano. The peak eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 15 recorded a strong infrasound signal that lasted nearly 10 hours. These data provide new information about the sequence of volcanic eruptions during the climax phase. In addition, about 35 hours after the beginning of the climax phase, a weak and long-lasting wave train was also recorded. These waves come from the northeast and southwest, and are interpreted as waves A2 and A3 caused by climatic bursts. The five Japanese weather stations of the Japan Meteorological Agency also recorded sound waves. This complex and slender waveform shows the superposition of several wave trains excited by different explosions. The longest time of the shock was 13.9 minutes, more than twice the longest time when the St Helens volcano erupted in 1980. Preliminary energy estimates based on micro-pressure data have an explosive equivalent of about 70 megatons of TNT. In 1991, the eruption of Pinatubo produced various oscillations in the atmosphere and on the ground. The most frightening thing was that the violent eruption of the volcano created a nightmare scene like a "nuclear winter" for the local area. Is it nuclear winter?
nuclear winter
nuclear winter is a serious and long-lasting global climate cooling effect, which generally occurs after a large-scale fire storm after a large-scale nuclear war. Of course, this "general" is based on the fact that such a fire will inject smoke and dust into the stratosphere , where the smoke and dust will block some direct sunlight on the surface of the earth. It is speculated that the resulting temperature drop will lead to widespread crop failures and famines. When developing a computer model of the nuclear winter scenario, the researchers used the conventional bombing of Hamburg and the Hiroshima fire storm in World War II as examples. In these examples, soot may be injected into the stratosphere.At the same time, modern observations were made on natural large-scale wildfire storms.
In fact, "Nuclear Winter", originally called "Nuclear Dusk", has been regarded as a scientific concept since the 1980s because of an early assumption that nitrogen oxide emissions from fireballs will Destroying the ozone layer has gradually lost its credibility. It is under this background that the climate effect of fire smoke and dust has become the new focus of the climate effect of nuclear war. In these model scenarios, it is assumed that various soot clouds containing uncertain amounts of soot are formed over cities, oil refineries, and more rural missile silos. Once the researchers have determined the amount of soot, the impact of these soot clouds on the climate can be modeled. The term "nuclear winter" is a new term coined by Richard Turco in 1983, referring to a one-dimensional computer model built to test the view of "nuclear dusk". The model predicts that a large amount of smoke and smoke will stay in the air for several years, leading to a serious drop in global temperature. Turco later distanced himself from these extreme conclusions. After the main group of climatologists supporting this hypothesis failed to predict the impact of the oil fire in Kuwait in 1991, more than a decade has passed without any new papers published on this topic. Recently, the same group of famous modelers from the 1980s began to publish the output of computer models. These new models produced the same general findings as the old models, namely that 100 fire storms were ignited, each with an intensity comparable to that observed in Hiroshima in 1945, and may produce a "small" nuclear winter. These firestorms will cause smoke and dust (especially black carbon) to be injected into the stratosphere of the earth, creating an anti-greenhouse effect and lowering the temperature of the earth's surface. Alan Robock’s model shows that the severity of this cooling indicates that the cumulative products of 100 such fire storms can reduce the global climate by approximately 1°C (1.8°F), largely eliminating man-made causes. Global warming.
So is nuclear winter possible in the future?
It is very difficult. The largest nuclear winter in human history was in 1816. It was a year without summer. From April 5th to 15th, the Tambourine volcano erupted and spewed about 100 cubic kilometers of space. dust,This is the largest eruption on record. Several smaller volcanic eruptions also occurred a few years ago. volcanic ash blocked the sun and caused a worldwide famine. Even if such a terrifying force disperses after only one summer, it is even more difficult for humans to make nuclear weapons.
The output of nuclear weapons does not affect the environment linearly. In other words, even if a bomb of 1 million tons has 10 times more energy than a bomb of 1 million tons, it does not mean that it produces 10 times The destructive power. The thermal radiation of decays in inverse square ratio, while the explosion decays in inverse square ratio from the knock point. Most of the extra heat and energy rise directly, and then drop rapidly as the distance from the explosion point increases. Because the output is smaller, the energy is not enough to break through the stratosphere, and for bombs that are not millions of tons, the earth has its own protection mechanism to protect the particles released in the troposphere. This mechanism is very effective.
The only way to keep particles in the air longer is to blow them up to a height of tens of thousands of meters. The reason this will not happen today is that the United States and Russia have eliminated millions of tons of weapons from high-alert strategic forces (intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). To get anything over tens of thousands of meters, you need to produce much more than 1 million tons. The bombs deployed today will throw fragments into the sky tens of thousands of meters, and these fragments will fall back to the earth like raindrops near the explosion point in a few hours or days.
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