Nuclear winter
Nuclear winter
Nuclear winter is a hypothetical climatic effect of nuclear war. It is theorized that detonating large numbers of nuclear weapons has a profound and severe effect on the climate causing cold weather and reduced sunlight for a period of months or even years, especially over flammabletargets such as cities, where large amounts of smoke and soot would be ejected into the Earth's stratosphere.
Similar climatic effects can be caused by comets or an asteroid impact, also sometimes termed an impact winter, or by a supervolcanoeruption, known as a volcanic winter.