page_title: Nuclear winter
section_title: Criticism and debate
hierarchical_section_title: Nuclear winter / Criticism and debate
caption_attribution_description: 空襲により焦土と化した東京。日本橋浜町、久松町付近。隅田川にかかる橋は新大橋。
context_page_description: Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a nuclear war. The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into the stratosphere, where it can block some direct sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth. It is speculated that the resulting cooling would lead to widespread crop failure and famine. When developing computer models of nuclear-winter scenarios, researchers use the conventional bombing of Hamburg, and the Hiroshima firestorm in World War II as example cases where soot might have been injected into the stratosphere, alongside modern observations of natural, large-area wildfire-firestorms.
context_section_description: The four major, largely independent underpinnings that the nuclear winter concept has and continues to receive criticism over, are regarded as: firstly, would cities readily firestorm, and if so how much soot would be generated? Secondly, atmospheric longevity: would the quantities of soot assumed in the models remain in the atmosphere for as long as projected or would far more soot precipitate as black rain much sooner? Third, timing of events: how reasonable is it for the modeling of firestorms or war to commence in late spring or summer; this is done in almost all US-Soviet nuclear winter papers, thereby giving rise to the largest possible degree of modeled cooling? Lastly, the issue of darkness or opacity: how much light-blocking effect the assumed quality of the soot reaching the atmosphere would have.
  While the highly popularized initial 1983 TTAPS 1-dimensional model forecasts were widely reported and criticized in the media, in part because every later model predicts far less of its "apocalyptic" level of cooling, most models continue to suggest that some deleterious global cooling would still result, under the assumption that a large number of fires occurred in the spring or summer. Starley L. Thompson's less primitive mid-1980s 3-Dimensional model, which notably contained the very same general assumptions, led him to coin the term "nuclear autumn" to more accurately describe the climate results of the soot in this model, in an on camera interview in which he dismisses the earlier "apocalyptic" models.
  A major criticism of the assumptions that continue to make these model results possible appeared in the 1987 book Nuclear War Survival Skills (NWSS), a civil defense manual by Cresson Kearny for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. According to the 1988 publication An assessment of global atmospheric effects of a major nuclear war, Kearny's criticisms were directed at the excessive amount of soot that the modelers assumed would reach the stratosphere. Kearny cited a Soviet study that modern cities would not burn as firestorms, as most flammable city items would be buried under non-combustible rubble and that the TTAPS study included a massive overestimate on the size and extent of non-urban wildfires that would result from a nuclear war. The TTAPS authors responded that, amongst other things, they did not believe target planners would intentionally blast cities into rubble, but instead argued fires would begin in relatively undamaged suburbs when nearby sites were hit, and partially conceded his point about non-urban wildfires. Dr. Richard D. Small, director of thermal sciences at the Pacific-Sierra Research Corporation similarly disagreed strongly with the model assumptions, in particular the 1990 update by TTAPS that argues that some 5,075 Tg of material would burn in a total US-Soviet nuclear war, as analysis by Small of blueprints and real buildings returned a maximum of 1,475 Tg of material that could be burned, "assuming that all the available combustible material was actually ignited".
  Although Kearny was of the opinion that future more accurate models would "indicate there will be even smaller reductions in temperature", including future potential models that did not so readily accept that firestorms would occur as dependably as nuclear winter modellers assume, in NWSS Kearny did summarize the comparatively moderate cooling estimate of no more than a few days, from the 1986 Nuclear Winter Reappraised model by Starley Thompson and Stephen Schneider. This was done in an effort to convey to his readers that contrary to the popular opinion at the time, in the conclusion of these two climate scientists, "on scientific grounds the global apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear winter hypothesis can now be relegated to a vanishing low level of probability."
  However while a 1988 article by Brian Martin in Science and Public Policy states that although Nuclear Winter Reappraised concluded the US-Soviet "nuclear winter" would be much less severe than originally thought, with the authors describing the effects m
caption: During the Operation Meeting House firebombing of Tokyo on 9–10 March 1945, 1,665 tons (1.66 kilotons) of incendiary and high-explosive bombs in the form of bomblets were dropped on the city, causing the destruction of over 10,000 acres of buildings – 16 square miles (41 km2), the most destructive and deadliest bombing operation in history.[158][159]
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