Nuclear testing in the old days was done in deserts, or in remote polar areas (mostly the Soviet Union there, though many of their tests were conducted in desert areas of Central Asia). Those sites were chosen partly because they avoid massive vegetation burnoffs. Underground tests don’t have that problem at all (and they became standard practice for the biggest players in 1963 with the signing of the Limited Test Ban treaty, which permitted only underground tests—China and France didn’t sign it, and continued with other forms of testing afterwards, but even they ceased above-ground tests by the 1980s).
The issue is basically creating huge, massive areas of rapid conflagration all at once. One or two aren’t going to produce a nuclear winter, but “one or two cities bombed” hasn’t been a realistic expectation for nuclear warfare since 1945. Cities burn, and inhabited areas often sit near heavily-vegetated areas like grasslands or forests, which also burn. Get enough of these burnoffs going at once, and the predicted behavior can’t be reasoned out from analogies to oil fires in Kuwait. Too much stuff is burning, too fast, in too many places over too wide an area.
With only two countries (an unreasonably small number in real-world terms given the actual geopolitics involved) using only 50 weapons each (a ludicrously small number if you look at actual strategic warfare scenarios) in airburst configuration (minimizing fallout, as the fireball doesn’t touch the ground) you get frosts during “summer” for most of the planet, and persistent effects for up to a decade. Lest you be concerned about privileging the hypothesis, note that In nuclear warfare terms, this is an extremely convenient possible world for the “nuclear winter isn’t an issue” camp, and there are essentially no realistic strategic-level nuclear conflicts which can be modelled in those terms.
The history of nuclear testing in the 20th century involves a great deal of planning specifically to prevent runaway wildfires; that’s why testing over 1000 bombs in deserted areas with little plant life hasn’t touched off nuclear winter.
Citations first:
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/
Now, to clarify:
Nuclear testing in the old days was done in deserts, or in remote polar areas (mostly the Soviet Union there, though many of their tests were conducted in desert areas of Central Asia). Those sites were chosen partly because they avoid massive vegetation burnoffs. Underground tests don’t have that problem at all (and they became standard practice for the biggest players in 1963 with the signing of the Limited Test Ban treaty, which permitted only underground tests—China and France didn’t sign it, and continued with other forms of testing afterwards, but even they ceased above-ground tests by the 1980s).
The issue is basically creating huge, massive areas of rapid conflagration all at once. One or two aren’t going to produce a nuclear winter, but “one or two cities bombed” hasn’t been a realistic expectation for nuclear warfare since 1945. Cities burn, and inhabited areas often sit near heavily-vegetated areas like grasslands or forests, which also burn. Get enough of these burnoffs going at once, and the predicted behavior can’t be reasoned out from analogies to oil fires in Kuwait. Too much stuff is burning, too fast, in too many places over too wide an area.
With only two countries (an unreasonably small number in real-world terms given the actual geopolitics involved) using only 50 weapons each (a ludicrously small number if you look at actual strategic warfare scenarios) in airburst configuration (minimizing fallout, as the fireball doesn’t touch the ground) you get frosts during “summer” for most of the planet, and persistent effects for up to a decade. Lest you be concerned about privileging the hypothesis, note that In nuclear warfare terms, this is an extremely convenient possible world for the “nuclear winter isn’t an issue” camp, and there are essentially no realistic strategic-level nuclear conflicts which can be modelled in those terms.
The history of nuclear testing in the 20th century involves a great deal of planning specifically to prevent runaway wildfires; that’s why testing over 1000 bombs in deserted areas with little plant life hasn’t touched off nuclear winter.
Sounds good to me! Thanks for the info.