Wildfires Are Now So Bad That Scientists Are Using Them to Study Nuclear War

[Javaman]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kyaq/wildfires-are-now-so-bad-that-scientists-are-using-them-to-study-nuclear-war

A smoke plume from the 2017 wildfires in the Pacific Northwest mirrored simulations of nuclear winter, and showed that the aftermath of a nuke war may be worse than anticipated.

Two years ago, British Columbia suffered one of the worst wildfires in the Canadian province’s history, which consumed 1.2 million hectares and displaced 65,000 people. The 2017 blaze was so intense that scientists are using it to model the climate conditions that might be created in the fallout of nuclear war, according to a study published on Thursday in Science.

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Black carbon, or soot, was found to be the main driver of its stratospheric ascent. This thick air pollutant only made up about 2% of the 0.3 teragrams of smoke from the wildfire, but it had an outsized effect on the plume because it absorbs so much solar radiation. As a result, the black carbon became heated, which in turn propelled smoke higher into the atmosphere.

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But wait: It gets more terrifying. The study also found that nuclear winter simulations have been too optimistic about the rate at which wildfire smoke will dissipate. The fact that the 2017 plume persisted for two-thirds of a year revealed that the smoky aftereffects of a nuclear war would likely last longer than originally projected in models.

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