Daily Archives: July 21, 2014

One key piece of the world’s evolution toward nuclear sanity during the height of the Cold War was motivated by growing understanding of a fundamental meteorological phenomenon: the development of what’s now known as upper-level frontal systems.

The first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico, ushering in the nuclear age. Over the next decade and a half, continuously bigger bombs were tested in our atmosphere and oceans. Most of these bombs were exploded in the Earth’s stratosphere under the assumption that the air never mixed downward into the troposphere, where we all live. Continue reading →