Cold war atom bomb tests increased rainfall in UK, scientists find

RADIATION FROM atomic bomb tests during the Cold War era caused changes in the atmosphere that led to increased rainfall during that time, scientists have found.

Even though the detonations carried out in the 1950s and 1960s occurred in remote areas, the scientists said these tests resulted in changes to rainfall patterns in certain parts of the UK, despite being thousands of miles away from those sites.

A team of researchers from the universities of Reading, Bath and Bristol looked at historic rainfall records between 1962-64 from research stations in London and Scotland.

They found clouds were “visibly thicker” and there was “24 per cent more rain on average” on the days when there was more radioactivity in the Shetland Isles.

Giles Harrison, a professor of atmospheric physics at the University

of Reading and lead author on the study, said: “The politically charged atmosphere of the Cold War led to a nuclear arms race and worldwide anxiety.

“Decades later, that global cloud has yielded a silver lining, in giving us a unique way to study how electric charge affects rain.”

Radioactivity is the emission of radiation originating from a nuclear reaction. It can also arise from the spontaneous decay of unstable atomic nuclei.

Although thousands of miles away from the detonation sites in the US and around the world, rainfall patterns in the Shetlands showed “significant changes” during the test period as radioactive pollution spread widely throughout the atmosphere.

Scientists believe learning more about how electric charge affects rainfall will improve understanding and could help relieve droughts or prevent floods.