“The Day After Tomorrow”: Spectacular fiction or Science
Author: Khaled Sultan Almarzo
The
Day After Tomorrow, a 2004 film by Roland Emmerich.
The movie's onset is a strange and menacing weather phenomenon that is
inexplicable and anomalous. These are depicted as hailstorms pouring hail the
size of small rocks and a series of freak storms in Tokyo, and snow in New
Delhi. The reason, an overnight climatic change at the global level, which goes
unnoticed because of the anomalous local weather. This change is caused by
successive superstorms which freeze entire cities and the whole of the Northern
Hemisphere is in an ice age in a night. The film has successfully dramatised
the malevolence of this weather as depicted in a popular scene where New York
City is frozen by a massive cyclone, the temperature drops so fast that a
helicopter drops mid-flight to the ground. But what part of it is plausible and
scientifically accurate?
Image Source: 20th Century Fox / Fair Use
Antagonist: The Weather
The weather is the antagonist in the
movie, the cause of all the drama depicted in the movie. The protagonist,
however, is a human, paleoclimatologist Jack Hall, portrayed by Dennis Quaid.
He foresees an unexpected consequence of the melting polar ice caps: the
disruption of the North Atlantic Ocean current system. His warnings, though,
fall on the deaf ears of the world leaders. The breakdown of oceanic heat
transport results in enormous, intense storms, which cause rapid temperature
drops all over the planet.
Jack's son, Sam, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is seen taking refuge during a
superstorm in the Manhattan library. This movie is driven by the weather and
poses an important question of climate responsibility.
Rapid Weather Changes -
Complete fiction?
The movie is not entirely unscientific.
The plot heavily relies on the disruption and followed by a complete breakdown
of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (commonly referred to as
AMOC). AMOC is a wide, globally encompassing system of oceanic currents that
also includes the Gulf Stream. This oceanic heat is transported between the
equator and the poles over these currents, and its disruption can, at least
theoretically, trigger region-wide climate changes. However, one prominent
pitfall of the plot of the movie is that this disruption cannot happen over
days; it would take decades or centuries to cause any tangible effects.
AMOC has been a topic of research, and it
has been seen that Greenlandic ice melt caused by global warming is one of the
factors leading to the weakening of AMOC. The fresh water flowing to the salty
North Atlantic water hinders its ability to sink and drive the current
(Rahmstorf, 2006). However, the scientific plausibility of the movie is limited
to this fact. The flash freezing super storms shown in the movie are not
possible because the laws of fluid motion and thermodynamics prohibit it.
The premise, although not possible, is
not entirely fictional. Around 12,000 years ago, the Younger Dryas event caused
temperature drops of ~10°C were seen over the course of a few decades (Alley,
2000). Similar to the movie's story, a plausible cause for this event has been
theorised to be the disruption in the oceanic currents due to molten
freshwater. Although this drop in the temperature was gradual. Abrupt changes
in the temperature are possible, but the flash-freezing kind as depicted in the
movie is not.
Reality against Drama
Some scientists have noted that the movie
was exaggerated, and it pushed the consequences of anthropogenic climate change
to mainstream (Leiserowitz, 2004). The movie has several dramatic depictions,
and several behaviors of weather patterns have been fictionalised. Like the eye
of the superstorm, that is a cold air vacuum that freezes anything in an
instant.
One thing the movie has done with great
accuracy and impactful dramatisation is to show the delicate balance of the
natural patterns and systems. The failure of one of the systems can lead to a
cascade of failures. The decade of 2020 has proved that these interconnected
systems and their compounded failure are not only possible, but are already in
progress.
Conclusion
The
Day After Tomorrow is as much a warning as it is a
fictional tale. The increased instances of extreme weather events, weakening of
AMOC due to rapid global warming are all signs of an impending disaster. Hence,
the cautionary warning of the movie is more important than ever.
References
●
Alley, R. B. (2000). The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed
from central Greenland. Quaternary
Science Reviews, 19(1-5), 213–226.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-3791(99)00062-1
●
Rahmstorf, S. (2006). Thermohaline Ocean Circulation. In: Encyclopedia of Quaternary Sciences.
Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-44-452747-8/00132-1
●
Leiserowitz, A. (2004). Before and After The Day After Tomorrow: A
U.S. Study of Climate Change Risk Perception. Environment, 46(9), 22–37.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2004.10545187
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