Stratospheric science and the Cold War

Abstract:

With the beginning of the Cold War in 1945, the stratosphere became of strategic interest for the U.S. and Soviet military. Atmospheric nuclear explosions, particularly the H-bomb test trials beginning in 1952, not only affected local weather, but also had an impact on the stratosphere. The meteorologist Harry Wexler from the U.S. Weather Bureau was in charge of exploring the possible environmental consequences of atmospheric nuclear explosions. He participated in several classified projects studying the global consequences of nuclear explosions, in which numerous prominent scientists, like John von Neumann and Edward Teller participated. In the absence of sustained data and in situ measurements, these projects were essentially speculative. For further orientation, the scientists turned to the well-studied 1883 volcanic eruption of Krakatau to study pressure waves and the atmospheric distribution of radioactive particles. In 1955, John von Neumann compared the largest atomic explosions to one Krakatau eruption, and speculated that it would take one hundred Krakatau eruptions over a period of ten or twenty years to bring back “the conditions of the last ice age.” As part of nuclear testing programs between 1958 and 1962, the stratosphere itself became also the site of nuclear explosions, in order to study possible effects on Earth as well as on satellites. In the late 1950s, Wexler worked to expand a field program which involved specially equipped aircraft, balloons, and rockets to obtain stratospheric air examples and measurements. One result of these studies was the discovery of the stratospheric sulfate layer (or Junge layer) in 1960, and the collection of in situ data after the eruption of Mt. Agung in Indonesia in 1963. While many of these studies were secret, the debate during the 1980s about nuclear winter, which focused on the climatic consequences of a nuclear war between the two super-powers, made atmospheric science relevant in the public domain, foreshadowing subsequent debate about climate change. This paper underlines the extent to which the Cold War nourished and shaped the field of stratospheric research.