{"id":22999,"date":"2022-07-11T10:03:49","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T04:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=22999"},"modified":"2022-07-11T10:03:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T04:18:53","slug":"nuclear-war-would-turn-oceans-upside-down-crash-food-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/nuclear-war-would-turn-oceans-upside-down-crash-food-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear War Would Turn Oceans Upside Down, Crash Food Web"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MADISON \u2014 Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has given the specter of nuclear war renewed weight as a global threat, and a new study of the environmental impact of a nuclear conflict describes dire consequences for the world\u2019s oceans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf there were a nuclear war, these huge explosions and the firestorms they cause could throw so much soot \u2014 teragrams, or millions of tons \u2014 into the atmosphere, it would block out enough sunlight to cool the atmosphere significantly,\u201d says Elizabeth Maroon, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In just one month after a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States or India and Pakistan, average global temperatures would drop by 13 degrees Fahrenheit \u2014 a larger temperature change than in the last ice age \u2014 according to climate modeling by Maroon and collaborators from around the world. The research team, led by Louisiana State University professor of oceanography and coast sciences Cheryl Harrison, published their findings on July 7 in the journal AGU Advances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even setting aside radioactive fallout, the consequences on land would be dire, including widespread crop failures. But in just a year, the planet\u2019s interconnected oceans would enter a state unfamiliar to scientists like Maroon who study the way oceans have changed on much longer time scales. And, unlike effects on the atmosphere and on land, oceans would not fully recover within the 30-year time period covered by the researchers\u2019 simulations of nuclear conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChanges in the ocean take longer than in the atmosphere or on land, but our modeling shows that even in the first year after a nuclear war the ocean circulation would have started changing drastically,\u201d says Maroon, an expert on the interplay between the Atlantic Ocean\u2019s complex circulation patterns and Earth\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Atlantic\u2019s major circulation turn-around in the northern latitudes \u2014 in which warm surface water streaming north to Greenland, Iceland, and Norway cools and sinks into middle depths to be drawn south again \u2014 comes unhinged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithin the first year or two, water in the North Atlantic sinks all the way to the bottom of the ocean, which we think has not happened even in the ice ages,\u201d says Maroon. \u201cIn today\u2019s ocean, only near Antarctica does water sink all the way to the seafloor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That unprecedented mixing and ocean circulation speed-up \u2014 which would last for about two decades \u2014 would move nutrients in the ocean vital for supporting the smallest and most numerous marine organisms, like plankton, into entirely unfamiliar conditions around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would also result in cooling so strong it would extend sea ice and render impassable major seaports that are now open year-round, and would likely cause significant damage to much of the ocean food web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no secret that nuclear winter would be terrible,\u201d Maroon says. \u201cWhat these study shows are the lasting extent of effects we hadn’t really addressed before on ocean circulation and ecosystems and the very base of the food web.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has given the specter of nuclear war renewed weight as a global threat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",834,587,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion-200x200.png",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion-568x400.png",568,400,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion-768x541.png",750,528,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion-675x475.png",675,475,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",834,587,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",834,587,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",834,587,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",810,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",600,422,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",600,422,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion-760x490.png",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion-550x360.png",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion-95x65.png",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",640,450,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",96,68,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lsu-nuclear-explosion.png",150,106,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Environment<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}