Atom Bombs & Weather
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The dawn of the nuclear era raised new issues for meteorologists. How would atomic bombs affect the weather? The nuclear physicist I.I Rabi speculated that the Trinity test might incinerate the Earth's atmosphere, but this did not come to pass. Scientists realized, however, that a nuclear explosion releases an immense amount of energy and produces large amounts of radioactive dust. On the morning of August 6, 1945 the atomic bomb transformed a clear day with scattered clouds over Hiroshima into a fire storm that generated huge cumulonimbus clouds, lightning, thunder, and black rains that drenched the scorched and devastated city. Scientists soon learned that radioactive fallout from a nuclear explosion spread in an ominous plume downwind and circled the globe at high altitudes in the jet stream.

Although scientists and the military discounted any direct connection between atomic bombs and the weather, the public suspected more sinister connections. Nuclear explosions were blamed for tornadoes in the United States, floods in Germany, drought in Siberia, and climate warming in the Northern Hemisphere. In 1954 fallout from a large H-bomb test necessitated the evacuation of the Marshall Islands and contaminated a Japanese fishing vessel, Lucky Dragon. Insidious new toxins such as radioactive iodine and strontium-90 quickly found their way into the food supply and the environment.

The resulting international outcry prompted the creation of the Committee against A & H Tests. In 1963, following a long crusade spearheaded by non-governmental groups and supported by meteorologists, the three nuclear nations - the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union‹signed and ratified the Limited Test Ban Treaty which banned atmospheric nuclear testing. One year later China conducted an atmospheric test and became the world's fourth nuclear nation.