Weather Whys; Climatological Terrorism

This is weather-wise. Toward the end of the recent conflict in the Persian Gulf, the Iraqi army set ablaze hundreds of oil wells in war-torn Kuwait. Atmospheric scientists and environmentalists were stunned by what they viewed as an act of climatological terrorism. They were concerned the vast quantities of suit particles being spewed into the air might cause a severe cooling of the global climate. But if there can be any good news in that situation, it may be that the effects of the Kuwaiti oil well fires are turning out to be less severe than many scientists feared. For one thing, most of the suit is staying in the lower atmosphere. That's certainly bad for air quality in the Gulf region. But if large quantities of the suit and other particles don't make it into the upper atmosphere, they can't block out significant amounts of the incoming solar radiation and thereby cause global cooling. There's evidence the atmosphere may even be cleansing itself of a lot of that lower

atmosphere's suit. The extreme heat from a burning oil well causes an updraft of air to form, which helps build a large, cumulus cloud over the well. Since the suit particles attract water, the cloud droplets contain significant quantities of those particles. And while the subsequent rains may help clean the air, they are also responsible for some very dirty water. In fact, parts of the Gulf region have reported receiving highly acidic rain and even black snow. So, while the global consequences of the Kuwaiti oil fires may be slight, the local consequences will probably be severe. Otherwise, it's produced with the assistance of the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, the Oklahoma Climateological Survey, and the School of Meteorology, all at the University of Oklahoma. Whether wise is made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation. For whether wise, I'm Drew Barlow.