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of smoke and soot would be injected into the Earth's stratosphere.

This layer of particles would significantly reduce the amount of sunlight that reached the surface, and could potentially remain in the stratosphere for weeks or even years (smoke and soot arising from the burning petroleum fuels and plastics absorbs sunlight much more effectively than smoke from burning wood). The smoke and soot would be shepherded by strong west-to-east winds, forming a uniform belt of particles encircling the northern hemisphere from 30° to 60° latitude. These thick black clouds could block out much of the sun's light for a period as long as several weeks, causing surface temperatures to drop by as much as 20°C for several weeks

The combination of darkness and killing frosts, combined with high doses of radiationRadiation generally means the transmission of objects or information from a source into a surrounding medium or destination. Within physics, related concepts are: Ionizing radiation is a stream of particles (photons or other particles) with sufficient ene from nuclear falloutFallout is the residual radiation hazard from a nuclear explosion and is named from the fact that it "falls out" of the atmosphere in to which it is spread during the explosion. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust created when a nuclear weapon expl, would severely damage plantGreen algae land plants (embryophytes non-vascular embryophytes Hepatophyta liverworts Anthocerophyta hornworts Bryophyta mosses vascular plants (tracheophytes seedless vascular plants Lycopodiophyta clubmosses Equisetophyta horsetails Pteridophyta "true" life in the region. The extreme cold, high radiation levels, and the widespread destruction of industrial, medical, and transportation infrastructures along with food supplies and crops would trigger a massive death toll from starvation, exposure, and disease. It was also thought that nitrogen oxideNitrogen has six different oxides: Nitric oxide (NO) Nitrous oxide (NO) Nitrogen dioxide (NO) Dinitrogen trioxide (NO) Dinitrogen tetroxide (NO) Dinitrogen pentoxide (NO) The term nitrogen oxide is imprecise and can be used to refer to any of these or tos generated by the blasts would degrade the ozone layerThe ozone layer is that part of the Earth's stratosphere which contains ozone. The total quantity of ozone in the ozone layer is not very large; if just the ozone were compressed to the pressure of the air at sea level, it would be only a few millimeters, as had been observed in the first thermonuclear blasts, which had unanticipated degrading effects on the ozone. These effects have since been mitigated by ozone regeneration, but the effect of a full-scale war would undoubtedly be much greater. Secondary effects from ozone depletion (and concomitant increases in ultraviolet radiation) would be significant, with impacts on the viability of most human staple agricultural crops as well as disruption of ocean food chains by killing off phytoplanktonPhytoplankton refers to the algal component of the plankton that drifts in the water column. The name comes from the Greek terms, , meaning "wanderer" or "drifter", and phyton or " plant". Phytoplankton, like other plants, obtain energy through the proces.

One effort to predict the metereological effects of a large-scale nuclear war was the 1983Events January January 1 Beat Raaflaub became Basel Boys Choir's new conductor January 1 the ARPANET officially changes to use the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet. January 1 compulsory wearing of seat belts becomes law in the UK. January 2 The mu "TTAPS" study (from the initials of the last names of its authors, R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan). The authors were inspired to write the paper by cooling effects due to dust storms on Mars and to carry out a calculation of the effect they used a simplified two dimensional model of the Earth's atmosphere that assumed that conditions at a given latitude were constant. The consensus with more sophisticated calculations is that the atmospheric model used in TTAPS probably overestimates the degree of cooling although the amount of this overestimation remains unclear. Although such nuclear war would undoubtedly be devastating, the degree of damage to life on Earth as a whole remains controversial.