"Pete B" wrote in message
...
"Alan Murphy" wrote in message
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"Togless" wrote in message
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"Alan Murphy" wrote:

Time to re-evaluate the work of Lorenz and Chaos Theory, perhaps,
in view of the amount of ordnance that's been chucked about recently.

Spoken as one who vividly remembers the 1947 winter as an 11 year
old. We were assured then that the recent atomic explosions at the end
of WW2 couldn't possibly affect the weather as their energy was
insignificant compared with storm systems. Curiously no one disputes
that Krakatoa changed the weather for several years.

Large volcanic eruptions put sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere
where they can stay for several years and thus affect the global
climate. As I understand it, our small and occasional atomic explosions
wouldn't be capable of doing that - any material thrown up by the
explosions would stay in the troposphere and just get rained out within
a few days. On the other hand if there was a nuclear war accompanied
by many explosions and huge fires then that would probably be enough to
get a significant amount of material into the stratosphere and then it
would be a different matter.
Are you familiar with the work of Lorenz vis-a-vis weather?

Alan


I'm not familiar with this work either, I shall search it out and read it
though for interest.

But what I am knowledgable on is that the individual nuclear weapon tests
of the mid/late '40's and '50's produced nothing other than a very short
burst of intense energy in a very small area in the overall scheme of
things. The idea that this minute (on a Global scale) energy spike can
have any affect on the Earths general climate is even more ludicrous than
the idea that the annual introduction into the atmosphere of several Giga
Tons of a gaseous chemical known to have a sharp measurable infra red
absorption peak can.

As the other poster correctly points out, volcanic aerosols of sufficient
level to affect anything involve the introduction of several mega Tons of
sulphates and fine dust into the Stratosophere, combined with an
explosion that dwarfs that of a nuclear weapon. For example, Mt Pinatubo
in 1991 threw an estimated 25 mT of sulphates into the Stratosphere where
they spread out to cover much of the Globe, were dense enough to cause
some spectacular sunsets and it took 2 - 3 yrs for them to gradually
'fall' out. Krakatoa was even bigger.

I don't think it's been in print now for decades but an excellent book by
Frank Lane (The Elements Rage) discussed the overall energy involved in
normal atmospheric weather phenomena such as hurricanes, tornadoes,
thunderstorms etc and how it dwarfed the energy produced by a few large
fireworks created by Man. That is well worth a read if a copy can be
found.

--
Pete

Thanks for the above replies. The work of Lorenz on the
chaotic nature of weather was to suggest that very small
changes in the initial conditions of a chaotic system could cause
huge and unpredictable variations on the final outcome. Amazing
that his work has fallen out of fashion so quickly :-)

Alan