2020
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1919049117
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A regional nuclear conflict would compromise global food security

Abstract: A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could ignite fires large enough to emit more than 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere. Climate model simulations have shown severe resulting climate perturbations with declines in global mean temperature by 1.8 • C and precipitation by 8%, for at least 5 y. Here we evaluate impacts for the global food system. Six harmonized state-of-the-art crop models show that global caloric production from maize, wheat, rice, and soybean falls by 13 (±1)%, 11 (±8)%, 3 (±5)%, a… Show more

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Cited by 93 publications
(95 citation statements)
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References 69 publications
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“…due to a climate-affecting volcano eruption, a world war, a pandemic), although unlikely, has attracted the attention of some analysts in the field of food security. As an example, Jägermeyr et al ( 2020 ) studied the effect on the world wheat production in a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Such conflict would generate climate perturbations that would provoke a fall in wheat production worldwide of up to 11% over 5 years.…”
Section: Network Vulnerabilitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…due to a climate-affecting volcano eruption, a world war, a pandemic), although unlikely, has attracted the attention of some analysts in the field of food security. As an example, Jägermeyr et al ( 2020 ) studied the effect on the world wheat production in a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Such conflict would generate climate perturbations that would provoke a fall in wheat production worldwide of up to 11% over 5 years.…”
Section: Network Vulnerabilitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Although global crop-hydrological models increasingly provide the infrastructure to represent mechanistic water partitioning, irrigation systems are still insufficiently represented in many models (e.g., Siebert and Döll, 2010;Elliott et al, 2014). In state-of-the-art global crop models contributing to the Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison project (GGCMI, Elliott et al, 2015;Franke et al, 2019;Jägermeyr et al, 2020), irrigation is assumed to be unconstrained by actual freshwater availability and to operate at loss-free water conveyance and application.…”
Section: Improving Crop Water Productivitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Process-based crop modeling frameworks have recently made it possible to further investigate potential implications of a nuclear conflict for global food security. Jägermeyr et al ( 28 ) found that even a limited regional nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, using less than 1% of the world’s nuclear weapons (5-Tg soot), is likely to decrease global caloric crop production by 11% for 5 y. This decrease would be four times larger than the highest observed historical anomalies.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Beyond the devastating direct impacts, the soot inputs from fires ignited by nuclear air bursts are likely to cause global cooling and reductions in sunlight ( 9 13 ), similar to historical volcanic eruptions ( Table 1 ) ( 3 , 14 23 ). Nuclear-war–driven climate perturbations are expected to disrupt global primary productivity, with a potential threat to human lives through crop failure in breadbasket regions and subsequent food shortages worldwide ( 24 28 ).…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
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