World News Can Nuclear Fallout Keep It Rain?

The United States, Soviet Union, and other nations frequently tested nuclear weapons above ground in the 1950 s and early 1960 s. The fallout included a devil’s mixed drink of radioactive components that can have subtle effects in the environment. Charged particles released throughout radioactive decay can smack into surrounding atoms and molecules, ripping them asunder and producing even more charged particles. Then, that flurry of charged particles can glom onto dust, soot, or water beads in the environment, often making the droplets large enough to be up to the ground as rain.

To see whether above-ground nuclear testing really increased rains, University of Reading climatic scientist Giles Harrison and associates took a look at Cold War-era rains records from a weather station on a remote island north of Scotland … The group’s analysis suggests a strong link in between fallout and rainfall from 1962 through 1964, a period when fallout from above-ground screening of nuclear weapons was typically present in the stratosphere. At the Scottish website, clouds were thicker, and rainfall was 24%greater on days when above-average levels of fallout existed (as presumed from measurements of the atmosphere’s electric field), the researchers report in Physical Review Letters