According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Nature Food in August 2022, a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia, which together hold more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, would kill 360 million people directly and more than 5 billion indirectly by starvation during a nuclear winter.
Another paper published that year, from the Tohoku University Earth science scholar Kunio Kaiho, compared the impact of nuclear winter scenarios on marine and terrestrial animal life with that of historical extinction events. Kaiho estimated that a minor nuclear war (which he defined as a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan or an event of equivalent magnitude) would cause extinctions of 10–20% of species on its own, while a major nuclear war (defined as a nuclear exchange between United States and Russia) would cause the extinctions of 40–50% of animal species…
There isn’t currently a scientific consensus, as wikipedia should be pointing out, with studies differing massively depending mostly on what model of soil uptake and preservation in atmosphere is used.
We know that the majority of in air debris would not come from the explosion, which is designed to minimize fallout in all modern weapons and deployment models, but from the resulting fires. We also know from previous tests the resulting fires don’t actually last long as they tend to burn through areas quickly.
In short it’s not a sure thing, and if any cooling effect does occur it wouldn’t start to touch the average heating we’ve introduced through climate change.
That long Wikipedia article conveys quite well how there isn’t consensus. We don’t know how bad it would be, because our various best models give different results. But to say it’s not a sure thing is different from saying “nuclear winter isn’t real,” which suggests a consensus that it won’t happen.
Well time to find out if Iran has a nuke and if we get to solve climate change by inducing a nuclear winter(yes I know nuclear winter isn’t real).
That’s not a consensus view.
Wikipedia
There isn’t currently a scientific consensus, as wikipedia should be pointing out, with studies differing massively depending mostly on what model of soil uptake and preservation in atmosphere is used.
We know that the majority of in air debris would not come from the explosion, which is designed to minimize fallout in all modern weapons and deployment models, but from the resulting fires. We also know from previous tests the resulting fires don’t actually last long as they tend to burn through areas quickly.
In short it’s not a sure thing, and if any cooling effect does occur it wouldn’t start to touch the average heating we’ve introduced through climate change.
That long Wikipedia article conveys quite well how there isn’t consensus. We don’t know how bad it would be, because our various best models give different results. But to say it’s not a sure thing is different from saying “nuclear winter isn’t real,” which suggests a consensus that it won’t happen.