ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
A regional nuclear conflict would compromise global food security.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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23 citing papers in PubMed, 146 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Air quality improvements can strengthen China's food security.Nature food · 2024Article
- Seaweed extract and arbuscular mycorrhiza co-application affect the growth responses and essential oil composition of Foeniculum vulgare L.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Mathematical optimization of frost resistant crop production to ensure food supply during a nuclear winter catastrophe.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Structural Evolution of Global Soybean Trade Network and the Implications to China.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Impact of the Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815 on islands and relevance to future sunlight-blocking catastrophes.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Assessing lignocellulosic biomass as a source of emergency foods.Current research in food science · 2023Article
- Food resilience in a dark catastrophe: A new way of looking at tropical wild edible plants.Ambio · 2022Review
- Microbiota Communities of Healthy and Bacterial Pustule Diseased Soybean.The plant pathology journal · 2022Article
- Potential impacts of climate change on agriculture and fisheries production in 72 tropical coastal communities.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Ending nuclear weapons before they end us: current challenges and paths to avoiding a public health catastrophe.Journal of public health policy · 2022Review
- Nutrition in Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios: Envisioning Feasible Balanced Diets on Resilient Foods.Nutrients · 2022Article
- Climate impacts on global agriculture emerge earlier in new generation of climate and crop models.Nature food · 2021Article
- Toward practical stratospheric aerosol albedo modification: Solar-powered lofting.Science advances · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
19 authors at 13 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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)%, and 17 (±2)% over 5 y. Total single-year losses of 12 (±4)% quadruple the largest observed historical anomaly and exceed impacts caused by historic droughts and volcanic eruptions. Colder temperatures drive losses more than changes in precipitation and solar radiation, leading to strongest impacts in temperate regions poleward of 30°N, including the United States, Europe, and China for 10 to 15 y. Integrated food trade network analyses show that domestic reserves and global trade can largely buffer the production anomaly in the first year. Persistent multiyear losses, however, would constrain domestic food availability and propagate to the Global South, especially to food-insecure countries. By year 5, maize and wheat availability would decrease by 13% globally and by more than 20% in 71 countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people. In view of increasing instability in South Asia, this study shows that a regional conflict using <1% of the worldwide nuclear arsenal could have adverse consequences for global food security unmatched in modern history.
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