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Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Global Food Insecurity and Famine From Reduced Crop, Marine Fishery and Livestock Production Due to Climate Disruption From Nuclear War Soot Injection
Nature Food, Vol.3(8), pp.586-596
2022
PMID: 37118594
Abstract
Atmospheric soot loadings from nuclear weapon detonation would cause disruptions to the Earth’s climate, limiting terrestrial and aquatic food production. Here, we use climate, crop and fishery models to estimate the impacts arising from six scenarios of stratospheric soot injection, predicting the total food calories available in each nation post-war after stored food is consumed. In quantifying impacts away from target areas, we demonstrate that soot injections larger than 5 Tg would lead to mass food shortages, and livestock and aquatic food production would be unable to compensate for reduced crop output, in almost all countries. Adaptation measures such as food waste reduction would have limited impact on increasing available calories. We estimate more than 2 billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia—underlining the importance of global cooperation in preventing nuclear war.
Details
- Title
- Global Food Insecurity and Famine From Reduced Crop, Marine Fishery and Livestock Production Due to Climate Disruption From Nuclear War Soot Injection
- Authors
- Lili Xia (Corresponding Author) - Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyAlan Robock (Author) - Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyKim Scherrer (Author) - Universitat Autònoma de BarcelonaCheryl S. Harrison (Author) - Louisiana State UniversityBenjamin Leon Bodirsky (Author) - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact ResearchIsabelle Weindl (Author) - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact ResearchJonas Jägermeyr (Author) - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact ResearchCharles G. Bardeen (Author) - NSF National Center for Atmospheric ResearchOwen B. Toon (Author) - Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space PhysicsRyan Heneghan (Author) - Queensland University of Technology
- Publication details
- Nature Food, Vol.3(8), pp.586-596
- Audience
- PUBLIC
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date published
- 2022
- DOI
- 10.1038/s43016-022-00573-0
- ISSN
- 2662-1355
- PMID
- 37118594
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Science, Technology and Engineering
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99744889702621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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