A nuclear war between India and Pakistan would place the entire planet in jeopardy by unleashing a “Climate Catastrophe” according to new research published in Science Advances , a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The nuclear war between India and Pakistan could, over the span of less than a week, kill 50-125 million people. It would be more than the death toll during all six years of World War II, according to new research.
Today, India and Pakistan each have about 150 nuclear warheads at their disposal, and that number is expected to climb to more than 200 by 2025.
The picture is grim. That level of warfare wouldn’t just kill millions of people locally, It might also plunge the entire planet into a severe cold spell, possibly with temperatures not seen since the last Ice Age.
They find that if Pakistan attacks urban targets in 2025 with 150-kiloton nuclear weapons and if India responds with 100-kiloton nuclear weapons, smoke from burning cities would release 16 to 36 teragrams of black carbon into the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight and cooling the global surface by 2 to 5°C (3.6 to 9°F).
Researchers also estimate that global average precipitation would drop by 15 percent to 30 percent. Additionally, the rate at which plants store energy as biomass would decline by 15 percent to 30 percent on land and by 5 percent to 15 percent in oceans, a scenario that would threaten mass starvation.
The study was led by Owen Toon of the University of Colorado, Boulder. His team’s findings come as tensions are again simmering between India and Pakistan when Hindu-led government stripped Muslim majority Indian-controlled Kashmir of its statehood and divided it into two centrally governed union territories — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
