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the fires were extinguished. As a result, although
the fires had a regional climatic impact, the global
prognostications, which included the failure of
the Asian summer monsoon, did not come to pass
(Pearce 1991a; Johnson et al. 1991).
million tonnes of dust expected to be injected
into the atmosphere by the initial nuclear
explosions this would increase the turbidity of
the atmosphere to such an extent that major
global cooling would take place (see Figure 5.10).
The concept of nuclear winter grew out of a
study of the climatic consequences of nuclear war
published by Turco et al. in 1983. The study
postulated that a major nuclear conflict would
be followed by a very rapid cooling of the earth,
sufficient to cause temperatures to fall below
freezing in some areas even in mid-summer.
Because such an event would reduce temperatures
to winter levels, even after a midsummer war, it
was given the name nuclear winter, and the work
became known as the TTAPS study from the first
letters of the names of the investigators.
The TTAPS hypothesis was based on the
assumption that smoke and dust thrown into the
atmosphere during a nuclear war would increase
atmospheric turbidity to such an extent that a
high proportion of incoming solar radiation
would be prevented from reaching the earth's
NUCLEAR WINTER
The Kuwait oil field fires provided the
atmosphere with probably the greatest amount
of anthropogenically generated aerosols ever
produced by a single event, and to a number of
observers they shared similarities with the major
fires expected to follow a nuclear war (Pearce
1991 a). Urban fires, for example, with ready
access to smoke producing wood, paper, plastics
and fossil fuels would produce similar
combustion products. The fires likely to be
ignited by nuclear explosions were estimated to
be much larger in scale, however, capable of
adding more than 200 million tonnes of smoke
to the atmosphere over several weeks (Turco et
al. 1983). Together with the estimated 960
Figure 5.10 The development of nuclear winter: (a) the conflict; (b) post-conflict fires; (c) nuclear winter; (d)
the after-effects
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