Fire to Offer ‘Nuclear Winter’ Study : Defense Dept. to Monitor Controlled Blaze in Lodi Canyon

Controlled fires in the Angeles National Forest, 35 miles northeast of Los Angeles, are nothing out of the ordinary, but one such “prescribed fire,” scheduled for autumn, will be closely monitored by both the U.S. Forest Service and Defense Department.

While the Forest Service will survey the intentional blaze to find out more about smoke and gas emissions, the Defense Department will be studying possible effects of the “nuclear winter” phenomenon, officials said Thursday.

The 1,200-acre fire in Lodi Canyon will be small by comparison to most natural wildfires, but results from sophisticated airborne testing equipment will enable both groups to extend knowledge previously gained only in laboratory situations.

Part of the airborne testing will be done by the ER2 plane, a modern counterpart of the U2 spy plane, using infrared photography to show the growth of a large chaparral fire. Still other tests, including a computerized, three-dimensional view of the smoke plume’s spread, will be conducted from planes from the University of Washington and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Wildfires, explained Forest Service scientist Dr. Philip Riggan, are a major source of dangerous carbon monoxide, methane and nitrous oxide gases, and learning more about them will provide critical data needed to evaluate the global impact of fire on climatic changes.

At the same time, the Defense Department will also be conducting a battery of tests in and around the 15-20,000-foot smoke plume the fire is expected to send skyward.

“Data obtained from this experiment on smoke can provide insight into some of the scientific uncertainties connected with the so-called nuclear winter phenomenon,” said C. Milton Gillespie, director of the Defense Nuclear Agency’s Nuclear Winter Research Program.

Gillespie explained that by examining the physical interaction between smoke and the atmosphere, Defense Department scientists could expect to learn how widespread the smoke cloud from a post-nuclear blast fire would be.

The fire following a blast from the smallest nuclear weapon currently in the United States’ arsenal could expect to send a plume about seven miles high, said atmospheric scientist Dr. Richard Turco, one of the first scientists to postulate on nuclear winter’s effects.

Turco, of Marina Del Rey-based R&D; Associates, is one of a group of scientists who postulate that following a nuclear blast, smoke and soot would rise into the atmosphere in such great quantities that it would block out all sunshine, drastically lowering temperatures and possibly causing the extinction of all earthly life forms.

Observations of a similar fire burn-back process in Canada last year led American experts to believe they could gain significant scientific information from a controlled fire, Turco said.

The California tests--the first in a series of such experiments with controlled fires--are expected to cost nearly $750,000.