Cold war nuke tests changed UK rainfall patterns

摘要

ELECTRIC charge released by radiation from cold war nuclear bomb tests may have affected rainfall thousands of kilometres away, in the UK. Small droplets of condensation collide and merge in warm clouds to form larger and larger droplets, until these fall as rain. Electric charge in the atmosphere, including that formed during the decay of strontium-90 and other radioactive material used in nuclear weapons, can boost the likelihood that these droplets will collide to form rain. There was a major increase in atmospheric electric charge in the middle of the 20th century following a wave of cold war atomic bomb tests, often carried out in Nevada, US, Kazakhstan in the Soviet Union and in the Pacific.