Nuclear war between India, Pak could spell climate disaster : Report

UNITED NATIONS: A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could cause severe "climate cooling" and may have a devastating impact on agriculture worldwide, says a report jointly produced by Japan and Australia on nuclear-non proliferation and disarmament.

"Just a limited regional nuclear exchange, for example between India and Pakistan, with each side attacking the other's major cities with 50 low-yield Hiroshima-sized weapons, would throw up major concentrations of soot into the stratosphere which would remain there for long enough to cause unprecedented climate cooling worldwide, with major disruptive effects on global agriculture," the report says.

It reveals that during the eighties scientists had conducted research on the impact of nuclear war on the climate and found the possibility of pollution of atmosphere by massive amounts of debris and smoke would block out the sunlight for decades and lead to a "nuclear winter".

This would kill many plants and animals, drastically changing ecological balances, cause famines and lead to breakdown of communities not directly affected by nuclear explosions, says the report produced by International Commission for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament.

It states that after the eighties there was a great deal of suspicion about the "nuclear winter" theory but research on the subject was picking up again.