DOCS Professor to Testify at United Nations about Nuclear War

NEW YORK - On December 3, LSU CC&E’s Cheryl Harrison will be at the United Nations, providing testimony on a specialized area of research: the potential impacts of nuclear war impact on oceans and fisheries.  

It’s a grim but necessary topic, and one Harrison, an assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences and the Center for Computation & Technology, is well acquainted with.  

She has presented to groups around the world the after-effects of nuclear war, and her 2022 paper on food security after such a conflict – one of several she has co-authored - was recently recognized as one of LSU’s most cited papers of the last five years, with over 300 citations. 

Now, she will present to the UN’s Scientific Panel on the Effects of Nuclear War, as they  gather information on the physical effects and societal consequences of a nuclear war on human society and the planet 

“It is a measure of the impact of our work to be invited, and even that this panel exists, which our larger group's efforts over the last 5 years helped instigate,” she said. “It's great to be part of an effort doing good in the world on this scale.”  

It can be a difficult subject matter, she says. However, it’s worth it for her. “The positive aspect of this research is that it’s hugely influential in nuclear arms reductions.” International disarmament campaigns regularly cite her research, she says. “They use it as a motivator.” 

Harrison says she got into the field after modeling after-effects of an asteroid impact on the world’s oceans. Colleagues noticed and asked her to do something similar, focused on the short- and long-term impacts of nuclear war.   

For this research, Harrison frequently draws on records of massive volcanic eruptions, which are the closest corollary to nuclear war. Just as with a volcano, aerosols from a war would stretch across the globe, causing temperatures to cool and ice sheets to expand.   

A large enough nuclear incident could create a new ocean state. The initial cooling would impact the mixing of the ocean’s layers, from the surface all the way to the ocean floor. “It changes everything, overturning circulation. It changes the nutrient and temperature profiles of the ocean, which in turn affect biogeochemistry and ecology,” Harrison said. “And it takes a really long time for it to go back where it was, because time scales of recovery in the deep ocean are hundreds to thousands of years.” 

The impact of a major nuclear event on fisheries is no less dire. “Fish do not reproduce well in the cold, and so if they are overfished, they can’t make any more babies,” Harrison said. “You can’t fish your way out of nuclear winter.” 

Harrison said the next goal of her group is to make the data from their publications more accessible. They would like “people who don’t have specialized climate modeling experience to explore different human and environmental impacts at the country level. We hope that groups like this UN panel can use this data to answer their own questions,” she said