If world leaders want to slow global warming, all they have to do is pick a section of the earth and explode several hundred nuclear weapons, according to scientific modeling performed by NASA that determined what the effects of a nuclear war would have on rising temperatures around the world.

 

Using sophisticated computer technology, scientists examined the impact of a hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs going off, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. The explosions would likely cause massive fires that would release about five million metric tons of black carbon into the upper part of the atmosphere, and consequently reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth.

 

The result would be a lowering of temperatures by a global average of 2.25 degrees for two to three years.

 

The tradeoff of temporarily stopping global warming, however, would be widespread famine and disease, in part because cooler temperatures would have drastic effects on agriculture.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for Years (by Charles Q. Choi, National Geographic News)