It began 10 years ago today, on January 16th, 1991. Although Operation Desert Storm lasted for only a few weeks, in its aftermath 700 Kuwaiti oil wells were aflame.
During the spring and early summer of 1991 a pall of thick, black smoke covered large areas in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. At their height the fires were consuming five million barrels of oil a day, and injecting massive quantities of smoke and soot into the atmosphere.
Some scientists were afraid that this might turn out to be the most devastating aspect of the whole conflict. Their concern was that the particles of smoke and soot would rise high into the stratosphere, and remain entrapped there for an extended period, gradually encircling the entire globe.
They feared this might upset the Earth's radiation balance, by interfering with incoming solar radiation, and cause a major change in global climate.
One of the difficulties for scientists in trying to anticipate eventualities was that much depended on the size of the individual fires. Very large fires create their own convective currents, which carry pollutants high up into the atmosphere where they persist for long periods and cut off radiation from the sun.
Smoke nearer the ground, on the other hand, disperses much more quickly, drifting earthwards of its own accord, or often being washed from the atmosphere by rain.
Happily, the results were less serious than might have been the case. First, the smoke rose no higher than three or four miles above the ground, staying low enough for it to be washed out quickly by rain. This process was assisted by the fact that the polluting particles themselves were less sinister in composition than might have been feared.
They were predominantly hydrophilic rather than hydrophobic - they attracted water rather than repelling it - so that given the right conditions, each particle readily formed the nucleus of a water droplet which fell from the atmosphere as rain within a relatively short period. Sulphur dioxide, an important ingredient in acid rain, turned up in much smaller quantities than might have been.
Of course, in the vicinity of the fires the picture was as bleak as anybody might have feared. Much of the desert was painted black by showers of unburned oil droplets, and the average temperature in the immediate area dropped by several degrees. But the effects were localised; the world at large, and even Kuwait's downwind neighbours, escaped the worst excesses intimated for a time by the climatic Cassandras of the Desert Storm.