Geological Movie Review of The Day After Tomorrow - Overview
-UN Conference on Global Warming-
0:06:20 - The main part of the movie kicks off with the "UN Conference on Global Warming, New Delhi". The UN Conferences on Global Warming do actually take place where countries across the globe discuss, what else, global warming. In real life, the conferences initially started in 1992 with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which was a treaty where countries got together and vowed to make a difference in climate change (
UNFCCC.int). Following that, the UN set up an annual Conferences on the Parties (COP) about Global Warming. The COP started in 1995 in Berlin and continues to run up through today (as of 2013 when this is being written). In 2002 the conference was held in New Delhi (COP 8), as depicted in the movie (
UNFCCC.int). The conference took place from October 23rd - November 1st. I find this amazing that they actually went to that level of detail to get this right.
- Climate Shift 10,000 Years Ago -
0:06:21 - Jack Hall, which is the main character of the story (Quaid), goes on to talk at the conference about a "cataclysmic climate shift that occurred around 10,000 years ago". 10,000 years ago is the time when the Pleistocene epoch (the "Ice Age") approximately ended (
it is actually dated to 11,700 years ago) and the Holocene (the age of humans) began. Generally, the climate has been fairly stable over the last 10,000 years in what is considered a "warm period" following an ice age (
Nature). This stable period actually began around 10,000 years ago following a series of abrupt oscillations in the climate from 80,000 to 18,000 years ago (see Figure to left). As in the movie, these numbers are based on data obtained in ice cores, but this time they are mostly from Greenland. It has also been suggested recently that the climate was shifted about 10,000 years ago due to the extinction of the mammoths, in part due to humans, which changed the vegetation across the northern regions, which would have caused the warming of these northern regions like Siberia (
Live Science).
There is also an event that took place around 10,700 years ago termed the Younger Dryas, which seems to be a direct result of polar melting. This polar melting caused to temperature of Southern Greenland to rise by 7°C in about 50 years (
Dansgaard et al., 1989). This event ushered in the warming that is known from 10,000 years onward. However you slice it, it appears that a shift in the climate did take place 10,000 years ago, as recorded in the ice cores. Although the shift seems to be more towards balance than out of balance.
The problem though is that Jack goes on to state that what was detected in the ice cores, in the movie, was a concentration of natural green house gases that resulted in a smaller ice age that lasted 200 years. I have found no evidence of such an ice age. As mentioned in the previous paragraphs, I have found just the opposite, that 10,000 years ago was the beginning of stability in the climate. The ice age ended around 11,700 years ago and the glaciers took about 2,000 years to melt. That melting is what is visible as the strong uptick in the graph (to the left) before the final leveling out. This even led to climates being warmer and drier than they are today from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago (
snu.ac.kr). So other than getting the timing right, the movie completely made up the "cataclysmic" event.
- Warming Leads to Cooling -
0:06:43 - The next part is basically the explanation for the entire movie. It is stated that global warming can trigger a cooling trend, i.e., increased temperatures can lead to an ice age. Having taken Glacial Geology I have learned (previous to the movie coming out) that this is actually correct, no matter how convoluted it may sound. The reason for this is that the temperature of the Earth is maintained by the Gulf Stream and it's northern extension, the North Atlantic Current, along with the rest of the global oceanic circulation currents. These "streams" are bodies of water within the ocean that have different temperature and chemical properties than the surrounding oceanic water. This causes countries like the UK and Norway to generally have warmer climates than their counterparts along the same latitude (
Miami.edu). The result of an increasing temperature of the Earth (both as a result of global climate change, and its subset global warming) is that the ice sheets in Greenland are melting. The melting of the ice sheets releases a large amount of cold, fresh water into the northern Atlantic. Due to the low salt content the freshwater floats on top of the saltwater. If you look at the map (figure to the right), you can see that the warm Gulf of Mexico waters
are carried up to the coast of England on the surface (red lines) then drop to the bottom of the ocean (blue lines) and circulate south along the coast of the Americas. The sudden influx of cold, fresh water into the North Atlantic could potentially cause the North Atlantic Current, which is salt water, to get cut off. This would shut down the conveyor belt of oceanic water mixing globally as we know it. Eventually it would get restarted, although likely in a different but similar pattern, but the immediate effect would be to cut if off completely. Without the warmer water being circulated to the poles, the entire Earth's temperature would begin to drop. So, the basic premise of the movie is correct, a warming trend could lead to another ice age.
The main problem with this part of the movie though, is the map that they use (pictured left, arrows added to show direction of the movement as emphasized in the movie). It is a much simplified version of the already simplified figure above and to the right. The current they show of the Gulf Stream is actually running along the coast of Africa and Europe instead of from the Gulf of Mexico to England.
0:07:10 - The timeline of all of this occurring is also brought up in the movie which is a major flaw of the movie itself. Hall is asked when he thought this could happen and acting like a scientist he gives his best estimate, which could be any time really, anything from 100 years to 1,000 years. he stipulates though that something needs to be done today to help curb future catastrophes. Although, the timeline mentioned by Hall is feasible, this could take place over the course of the next few thousand years, the timeline of the movie takes a different course and is much sped up from that that is predicted.
0:32:23 - The North Atlantic Current is said to rely on the delicate balance between salt and fresh water. The movie then goes on to state that the current has reached a "critical desalinization point" due to the amount of fresh water dumped into the ocean by the melting of the polar ice, i.e. the Greenland Ice Sheet. What is meant by this "desalinization point"? Restating a little of what I said before, the way that the water circulation works in the North Atlantic is that warm water is carried north from the Gulf of Mexico. As it reaches the northern latitudes it then sinks. The heavier water is rich in salt, making it denser. Fresh water from rainwater and the melting of ice and snow, like from glaciers, is less dense than saltwater and therefore will actually float on top of seawater until enough mixing has taken place. This happens at all river deltas where fresh and salt water meet. What the movie is predicting is that the fresh water content has reached a maximum where suddenly the current is no longer dropping down into the ocean, cutting off oceanic circulation for the entire planet, or at least rerouting it, cutting off the warmer waters to the north.
This scenario is a distinct possibility. The melting of the ice caps could have a significant impact on the planet, plunging us into a colder climate due to the melting of the polar ice caps (
NASA). The problem though, is that if this were to happen it would take decades at the least to feel any significant impacts. The global temperature is not going to drop to freezing overnight, which is literally what the movie is stating. The globe is such a large place that it takes a large time for anything to change. Think of a truck versus a car driving down the highway. The larger the vehicle the more time it takes to alter its course.
- The Kyoto Accord -
0:07:10 - The Kyoto Accord is the next thing brought up in the movie. A controversial international treaty among nations that was started in 1997 and officially adopted in 2005. The purpose of the treaty was to legally bind countries to alter their greenhouse gas emissions (
UNFCCC.int). The main controversy was that the United States would not back the treaty due to the harm it would place on the economy by putting an unwanted demand on industry (
Newsmax.com) and that it did not include China and other fast growing developing countries, which were responsible for a large percentage of the global greenhouse gases (
USAToday). Since the US is one of the largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, this was seen as a possible failure of the document, although it has gone through without US backing. The depiction of the delegate from the United States shown in the movie is supposed to represent George W. Bush's rejection of the Accord due to the reasons that are mentioned in the movie.
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1:03:06 - Beginning with the second half of the movie, they start to describe what is going to happen to the Earth following the cessation of the storm activity. They mention that ice and snow will cover "the entire Northern Hemisphere" (apparently the Southern Hemisphere doesn't get cold?). This will lead into what is known as a perpetual cycle of cooling. The white snow reflects the sun, preventing warming, causing the Earth to cool even more. They also state that the Earth's temperature will be close to that of the last ice age, which is about 8°C cooler than it is today (USCD.edu). Now keep in mind this is the average global temperature, not any one particular locality. The movie is stating that this one storm is going to drop the entire global temperature 11 times lower than the entire rise in temperature the planet has seen in the last century due to human activity (NASA). That is terribly extreme, but it seems to fall in line with the extremeness of the entire movie.
To form the "glaciers" in the movie, they seem to take the 'freeze the ocean' approach as illustrated in NYC. Typical salt water freezes at -1.9°C, but in the process it excludes all of the salt (NOAA). This renders the remaining water saltier (brine), lowering the freezing point even lower. That along with the shear size of the ocean makes freezing ocean water nearly impossible. Even in the Arctic, subice water is still liquid. The salt in the water also reduces the rate at which sea water freezes (NASA). During this time in the movie and shortly after, it shows people moving around outside trying to reach warmer climates. This indicates that even before the 'big freeze' occurs in the movie the temperatures are cold enough to freeze salt water to a point that people could walk on it. And once again we tread into ridiculous territory where it is clearly impossible to do what is done in the movie, but they go right on ahead and do it anyway. 
0:43:20 - As the movie moves along they continue to get more and more unrealistic. This includes the massive flooding along, apparently, everywhere in the northern hemisphere, including coastal lands from Nova Scotia to Florida. These are the only confirmed areas of flooding, but since they are flooding in such a variety of areas you can assume that most coastal areas of North America are affected as well. 
In Nova Scotia, it was mentioned that the "ocean rose by 25 feet in a matter of seconds". Assuming that this is broadcast media sensationalism, let us take it as a large wave that over took the island. If we look at wave heights for Hurricane Sandy, it was recorded that they reached a record 32.5 feet before hitting land (Climate Central). Given waves of this height for a Category 1 hurricane, it is easy to believe that Nova Scotia could be inundated by waves of 25 feet with a far larger storm.
0:38:10 - Our first introduction into flash freezing comes from the mammoth in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), which was said to be "perfectly preserved in the Siberian tundra with food still in its mouth and stomach, indicating that it froze instantly which grazing". First off, as far as I am aware there are no preserved mammoths in the AMNH. They do have at least one skeleton though (pictured right). From the looks of it, in the movie they were in one of the Mammal Halls, which displays modern mammals that have been stuffed and posed among a backdrop of their environment. So obviously the movie made up some more information. Moving on.
0:31:40 - In the movie, the northern hemisphere is being consumed by three continental sized storms. One is located on North America where "Canadians are reporting tremendous circulation moving down from the Arctic". The second is in Russia where "there's a low pressure system unlike anything we've seen". The third one is over Scotland. They also mention Australia, which has recorded the strongest typhoon on record. This brings up the question, can the Earth sustain three-four continental sized storms, that are in essence one global storm with 3-4 separate aspects of it (pictured in the movie below right)? When looking at other planets in the solar system this does not seem too to far fetched, at first. In 2001 a dust storm encompassed half of Mars (NASA), although Mars does not have any oceans which would interfere with such a storm. On Earth, the largest storm systems that our planet sees on any given year are the Atlantic hurricanes and the Pacific typhoons. The largest storm ever recorded was 1979's Typhoon Tip, whose diameter could stretch from New York City to Dallas, a total of 1,380 miles, with wind speeds up to 190 mph (Scientific American). It would take a storm at least four times that size to equal the one of the continental storms in the movie. The largest storm to have formed in the Atlantic was 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which reached a 1,000 miles in diameter (Huffington Post). 
Besides a volcanic eruption, which was not mentioned in the movie so we can assume there was none, the only thing that could influence our atmosphere over the short term (days to weeks) would be extraterrestrial. Should something happen to the sun, like it going out, that would severely effect out global climate almost instantly. Other solar effects like solar flares and solar output do have an impact on the strength of storms and weather patterns but nothing that could be altered over a period of days or weeks. These fluctuations are cyclic and slowly build up and wind down with the solar output. They are also somewhat predictable based on these patterns (Science Daily). The extraterrestrial influence most likely to effect our climate almost instantaneously would be a large meteorite impact. A large enough impact has the same effect as a large volcanic eruption, which would be to put dust and debris into the atmosphere with atmospheric circulation distributing the particles across the globe. An impact along with the volcanic eruptions are what are cited as the main downfall of the dinosaurs (Berkeley.edu). So, in the movie, without a volcanic eruption or a meteorite impact, I would say that anything altering the climate of the Earth within days is near-impossible to impossible.
0:41:58 - The movie goes on to state that the weather in Scotland is looking like a hurricane. The major problem with this is that hurricanes don't form over land. They also don't form in cold weather. Well, let us first remove the use of the term "hurricane" since a hurricane has a specific definition of a cyclonic storm that forms in the western North Atlantic ocean. Since these storms did not form there, they are obviously not hurricanes by definition. They are cyclonic storms, cyclones, and cyclonic storms can form over land or water. Cyclones that form outside of the tropical regions are often referred to as mid-latitude or extratropical cyclones (aos.wisc.edu). As in the movie, they are areas of low pressure with winds that flow around the low pressure center, counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern. They occur at a strong temperature gradient where there is a boundary between a cold air mass and a warm air mass. The cold front comes into a region of already warmer air and then starts to rotate around. The storm can then either strengthen or weaken depending on the differences in the gradient. Extratropical cyclones are also known to travel more over land than their tropical counterparts which are associated with water (xweather.org). In the movie, the drastic changes in temperature were directly responsible for the storm formations. So in theory, it could be possible that one or two of the these extratropical cyclones could have formed due to the sudden changes in temperature, which would result in a cold weather front coming into an already warmer area. I am not saying that these could have been super storms that froze everything in site, just that they could exist as a possibility.
0:15:41 - We have entered the part of the movie where the major global storms start to manifest themselves. Our first view is from space, in what I can only assume is the International Space Station (ISP) since it was the only space station at the time of the movie (2002) (NASA). The figure to the right shows the space station in the movie (on top) versus an image of the International Space Station in 2006 (NASA). It is not actually a bad match. Knowing that they add and take modules off of the space station all of the time would account for any minor discrepancies and overall the main part of the station on the right portion of the image matches with the ISP in the bottom portion of the lower photo. 
0:26:12 - As the storms progress and increase in size throughout the first portion of the movie we now have the introduction of tornadoes in Los Angeles. California itself is not immune to tornadoes (a California tornado pictured left) and as of May, 2013 there are 400 tornadoes listed on the Tornado History Project as striking California since 1951 (TornadoHistoryProject). There are even 42 of those 400 that were in Los Angeles county alone and ranged in strength from a F0 to a F2 on the Fujita scale. The largest and most damaging Los Angeles tornado was on March 1st, 1983, a category F2 that traveled 3 miles, had 30 injuries, and caused $5-$50 million in damages. That same day also had one other recorded tornado (TornadoHistoryProject). We are not looking at Mid-West levels of destruction here, but tornadoes are far from unheard of in Los Angeles and California in general. 
0:08:13 - This next part of the movie shows some random weather events occurring across the planet. The first one is snow in New Delhi, which is mentioned as being "the coldest weather on record". Since the conference took place in real life from October 23rd to November 1st in New Delhi, we will use that time of year as our indication of what the weather would be like. The average high and low for the end of October is 87°F and 65°F (30.5°C and 18.3°C respectively) (Weatherspark.com). So if it was snowing this would be far outside of the norm. The record cold weather temperature for New Delhi is 30.9°F (-0.6°C), which could produce some nice big fluffy snow. This shows that any snow producing weather would be considered "the coldest weather on record". So in this instance the movie would be correct, if it were indeed snowing.
0:03:15 - The first part of the movie is actually rather commonplace in the world of geology, retrieving ice cores. In the movie, they start by retrieving ice cores that are 26 feet deep. Ice cores are typically drilled using mobile installations since you want to drill multiple cores over a variety of areas, similar to drilling cores for oil but you never actually find any "oil". The main purpose of an ice core is to obtain information locked in the ice. Pictured left is some of the ice core drilling that is going on in Greenland. The movie has this pictured pretty accurately (NASA), although each drilling station in real life is going to be different due to the individual personalities working on the project. The 26 feet depth of their drill is really just the start of most ice core drilling. Most ice cores can extend up to 3km in depth, far exceeding what they started to do here (British Antarctic Survey).
0:03:57 - The collection of the ice cores is not where the first geological catastrophe comes in, it is when a piece of the ice-shelf "the size of Rhode Island" breaks off, straight through where they were drilling. For a size comparison, Rhode Island is approximately 3,140 km2 . The interesting aspect of the Larsen-B ice shelf is that it was one of the first major ice shelves to break off of Antarctica back in 2002 (just before the movie was made). The size of that break off was 3,250 km2 . Exactly the right size to fit the description of the movie. So, the movie is obviously talking about the 2002 break off event. 
The breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf was not an isolated event. Shelves this size has broken off before and in increasing numbers. The largest ice shelf break off to date was back in 2000 when the B-15 iceberg, that was 31,000 km2 in area (The Encyclopedia of Earth), broke off of the Ross Ice Shelf (visible on the map above). One of the principle questions though is, what is the cause for these ice shelves to break off? The general reason for the break-off of an ice shelf is attributed to global warming. With global warming comes thinner ice shelves, faster moving glaciers, warmer bodies of standing water on the ice shelves, and a greater number of fractures (UCSB.edu). All of these things combined to help break the ice shelf apart. The direct reason for a fracturing of an ice shelve is that during the summer months, the water on the surface melts and forms lakes on top of the ice shelf. The water in the lakes forces its way into the cracks in the ice. Then as the water works its way into the cracks it refreezes pushing apart the ice, allowing for more meltwater to flow down. The meltwater then enhances the fracturing, eventually causing the piece to break off. The breakup of the Larsen B Ice Shelf can be seen over the beginning of 2002 in the image to the right.
