India-Pakistan nuclear war may lead to global starvation, says study

Even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan may lead to global starvation because of a famine, unmatched in modern history, eclipsing every historic drought and volcanic eruptions, says a new study released on Monday

The research conducted by 19 scientists in Europe and the US has suggested that the climate and crop impacts of such a nuclear exchange would lead to unprecedented food shortages affecting at least 71 countries.

This would happen due to the release of a huge amount of soot – created by the fireballs caused by nuclear explosions – that would block the sun, heralding an unforeseen winter that would cause the global temperature to drop by 1.8 degrees Celsius in the first five years.

For decades, researchers are worried about the possibility of a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan and its consequences. While its impact on climate change was evaluated, this is the first effort to understand what would happen to global food production.

The researchers used six state-of-the-art crop models and two sets of climate model simulations for the study and conclude that the release of 5 teragrams (one terra gram is one trillion grams) of soot would decrease the global temperature by 1.8 degrees Celsius and rainfall by 8%, on average, over the first 5 years.

The smoke from a single fire would not produce detectable climate impacts, but cumulative emissions from many fires generating several trillion grams of soot could substantially absorb sunlight in the stratosphere so that less energy reaches the earth’s surface cooling it for about a decade.

If targeted on urban areas, even a small 15-kt weapon, as the one used on Hiroshima, could ignite fires releasing large amounts of soot (black carbon). Once the smoke plume reaches the upper troposphere, soot would absorb solar radiation and self-loft into the stratosphere, where particles would spread globally within months.

This would lead to a drop in the production of maize, wheat, rice, and soybean by 11% annually for the first five years. Yield losses could reach 50% in temperate regions in the Northern Hemisphere, which includes countries that are major cereal grain exporters.

“By the fifth year, the availability of maize and wheat would decrease by 13% globally and by more than 20% in 71 countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people,” the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Among all crops studied, rice showed the lowest level of the loss.

According to a 2019 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute India currently holds 130-140 nuclear weapons but is expanding its military fissile material production capabilities on a scale that may lead to significant increases in the size of their nuclear weapon inventories over the next decade. Pakistan too has an estimated 140-150 nuclear warheads.