Did the Kuwaiti oil well fires contribute to global warming?
The massive plumes of smoke from over 600 oil wells set afire by retreating Iraqi troops in Kuwait presented a spectacular image of environmental destruction. Yet, when put in its global perspective, the 12,000 tons per day of smoke accounted for less than 10 percent of the emissions from burning biomass worldwide. The 1,800,000 tons per day of CO was only about 2 percent of the worldwide emissions of CO from fossil fuel and burning forests. The blocking of the sun by the dense smoke plumes did cause some short-term local cooling in parts of the Middle East and southern Asia. The nation of Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, reported May 1991 to be the coolest in the last 35 years. It is unlikely that the fires, massive though they were, would have a detectable impact on global climate change mechanisms.