Nuclear War Could Trigger Big El Niño and Decrease Seafood

The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, shows that turning to the oceans for food if land-based farming fails after a nuclear war is unlikely to be a successful strategy – at least in the equatorial Pacific. “In our computer simulations, we see a 40 percent reduction in phytoplankton (algae) biomass in the equatorial Pacific, which would likely have downstream effects on larger marine organisms that people eat,” said lead author Joshua Coupe, a post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Environmental Sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. “Previous research has shown that global cooling following a nuclear war could lead to crop failure on land, and our study shows we probably can’t rely on seafood to help feed people, at least in that area of the world.”