Ozone as a Sink for Atmospheric Carbon Aerosols Today and Following Nuclear War

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Abstract
In recent years the expected environmental consequences of nuclear war have been expanded to include the global impact of injection of huge quantities of smoke and dust into the atmosphere. Solar heating could cause this smoke cloud to rise to stratospheric heights, increasing local temperatures as much as 100 K. The lofting of carbonaceous soot particles into the stratosphere could cause the total ozone column to be reduced due to: (1) increases in catalytic destruction of ozone; (2) transport of ozone-rich, stratospheric air to regions where it is more quickly photolyzed as the ozone-poor, tropospheric air associated with the smoke cloud pushes into the stratosphere; and, (3) direct reactions of ozone with the carbon aerosols. Ozone reacts with carbon black surfaces to produce an oxygen molecule for every ozone lost. Removal of surface oxides formed in the reaction is the rate-limiting step for further reactions of ozone with the surface. Soot surfaces also react with ozone. This reaction is found to have an activation energy of ∼10.6 kcal/mol and a suggested fractional order with respect to ozone.