Entangled Histories: Climate Science and Nuclear Weapons Research 92
Harperdog writes "Paul N. Edwards has a great paper about the links between nuclear weapons testing and climate science. From the abstract: 'Tracing radioactive carbon as it cycles through the atmosphere, the oceans, and the biosphere has been crucial to understanding anthropogenic climate change. The earliest global climate models relied on numerical methods very similar to those developed by nuclear weapons designers for solving the fluid dynamics equations needed to analyze shock waves produced in nuclear explosions. The climatic consequences of nuclear war also represent a major historical intersection between climate science and nuclear affairs. Without the work done by nuclear weapons designers and testers, scientists would know much less than they now do about the atmosphere. In particular, this research has contributed enormously to knowledge about both carbon dioxide, which raises Earth's temperature, and aerosols, which lower it.'"
greenhouse gasses (Score:5, Interesting)
The effect of greenhouse gasses has been known for a couple of hundred years.
However, I think it was Sagan's group's concern about a possible Nuclear Winter that got people started actually thinking about greenhouse gasses and climate.
Re:Nuclear winter and the big bombs of the 50's (Score:5, Interesting)
But I don't think we can be certain of the effect of the nuclear tests. Many of the largest were low over water and kicked a lot of water into the stratosphere. We just don't have the data, and hence any conclusions are likely to be guesses.