DinoJim - The Day After Tomorrow Geological Review

-Stage 4.2.1-

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Disclaimer - This is going to be a geological overview of the movie The Day After Tomorrow. I am not going to focus on the plot, the acting, the directing or anything of the sort. This is purely a scientific critique on the movie and one from my own mind, so do not take that into effect on whether or not you are going to like this movie. In "science fiction" movies the role of the science advisors are often outranked by the director or other people in the movie and the science gets left out. So the bad science of the movie often is often not a result of a bad advisor. So do not take my critique of the science as a direct shot at the advisor.

Personally with all the "science" in the movie pushed aside I thought this was a very good movie. Now on the the geological review. I will also make time notes for when that part of the commentary is referring to. Another critique of the movie I found is here.

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- Geological Critique -

- The Story Basis -

First off the movie is not an original idea from the director but it is actually based on the novel The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. Now I have not read this book (yet?) so I can not make a definitive review of the it, but according to the reviews of the book it seems that it is written by some extreme ecologists who are just trying to push global ecological reform. Not a bad goal but causing panic is not the best way of going about it.

- Ice Cores and the Antarctic -

0:03:15 - Now the first part of the movie is actually rather commonplace in the world of geology, retrieving ice cores. In the movie they are retrieving them along the Larsen B Ice Shelf, off the coast of Antarctica. An ice-shelf is a floating piece of ice attached to the land, fed by the advancing glaciers. Attached to Antarctica these can be several hundreds of feet thick, while in the Arctic they are known to be much thinner. They are known for their sensitivity to climate change because a small rise in global temperature will cause a tremendous impact on the size of the ice-shelves.

The collecting of the cores is not where the main geological problem comes, it is when a piece of the ice-shelf "the size of Rhode Island" breaks off, straight through where they were drilling. Now assuming the rare event of an ice-shelf breaking, especially of one that size, and combine it with the fact the it broke directly through where they were drilling, we can not assume that that was a coincidence. So what are the likely occurrences that a core driller would cause an ice-shelf to break off? It has been recorded that ice-shelves the size of Rhode Island breaking off are far from outstanding and has occurred multiple times in multiple places (The Heat is Online). Here at The Cryosphere website they give what is likely causing these ice-shelf break offs. During the summer the water on the surface melts and forces its way into the cracks in the ice. The meltwater then enhances the fracturing, eventually causing the piece to break off. So the likelyhood that a core driller would break off a chunk of ice the size of Rhode Island is highly improbable, unless they happened to be drilling along the cracks already established (scientists would avoid this due to contamination from the meltwater) and it is already on the verge of breaking off, neither of which seemed likely in the movie.

- Global Warming → Ice Age -

0:06:20 - The next part of the movie is basically the explanation for the entire movie. The basic principle is that rapid global warming will lead to the next 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 Drift, along with it's extensions throughout the world. 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 (Wikipedia). What global warming does in the northern hemisphere is that it melts the ice caps, primarily in Greenland. This causes all the fresh water from the glaciers to flow into the ocean,dropping the salinity of the oceanic water along those streams, mixing the usually exclusive water types. If this occurs too rapidly it will shut off the streams, causing parts of the northern hemisphere to get colder, and eventually, issuing in a new ice age. So essentially what they said in the movie was correct, although the timeline is slightly skewed.

The only problem I really have with this part of the movie is that the Gulf Stream and the associated currents are flowing in the wrong direction. The Gulf Stream flows north from the Gulf of Mexico, not south like the movie depicts.

- Snow and Hail -

0:08:13 - This next part of the movie shows some random weather events occurring across the planet. These include snow in New Delhi and softball-sized hail in Japan. Typical weather for New Delhi in November, when the movie takes place, is about 20^oC (68^oF) and the average precipitation is 3mm (.12 inches) (EuroWEATHER). So basically unless the biggest storm ever were to occur, like in the movie, this would never happen. So this works but only in the microcosm of the movie.

The hail is a different story. Hail forms from the supercooling of water droplets in thunderclouds that instantaneously freeze to debris in the air (dust, bugs, other ice crystals). The hail then travels up and down through the storm gathering layers each rotation through the storm, so the larger the storm the larger the hail (Wikipedia). Hence a gigantic storm with incredible strong winds can make super sized hail, like in the movie.

As per the amount of hail that fell in such a short period of time I could not find anything proving or disproving that, but in my personal opinion the larger the hail size the less you can have of it. So for chunks of hail that big it is impossible to have that many falling in such a short time period, especially without any warning.

- Global Storms -

0:16:02 - The next part of the movie is when the actual storms start to manifest themselves. In total their are 3 storms all in the northern hemisphere and one on each continent. The storm location makes at least a little sense since they are in the northern hemisphere, since it is winter (November), and the southern hemisphere is in spring/summer mode. The main problem would be can the earth sustain 3 storms that combined form approximately across half the earth? The storm systems they also describe as cold weather hurricanes. Hurricanes are a warm weather phenomenon, which forming over equatorial waters, unlike these storms which form in cold weather over land.

These global storms also create some intense weather that does not typically occur, including tornadoes in California. On the purely fun side, it was cool to see Los Angeles torn apart by tornadoes, although at any given time in the movie I can only see 4 different tornadoes. The record for most tornadoes in a single storm is 7 (Nebtornadofacts) and in a single day is 38 (Supercell Merger), so this storm system is not remarkable in that sense at all. The most bizarre thing about this is their location, although some research indicates that California may be prone to tornadoes with the proper factors during the winter time (See box at right of the winter tornado line). The fact that the tornadoes merged into larger tornadoes is also not that remarkable since it has been witnessed numerous times before. Tornadoes typically form from what is called a supercell, a rotating thunderstorm that produces, in addition to tornadoes, damaging hail, non-tornadic winds and flash floods (Online Tornado Facts).

So unlike several on the succeeding events in the movie these storms seem possible even to the point of probable, although the location in California would be the furthest stretch of science. The storms that they qualify as hurricanes are most likely supercells (superdupercells) since they have the closest resemblance to what is formed. But again we are brought to the question can the Earth sustain a continental storm? When compared to other planets in the solar system this is not uncommon. In 2001 a dust storm encompassed half of Mars (NASA), although Mars does not have any oceans to interfere. On average, the largest storms on Earth are hurricanes and their Pacific counterparts typhoons. The largest hurricane ever recorded was Typhoon Tip whose diameter could stretch from Canada to Mexico (see picture). And that was the largest one ever in recorded history. It would take a storm approximately 4 times that size to equal the one in the movie, not only that but the Earth would then have to sustain 3 of those storms at the same time. That is utterly improbable to the point of impossible (science never deals in definitive's).

- Freezing Earth Rates -

0:22:47 - The makers of the movie tried to save themselves a little at this point of the movie by saying that this was occurring faster anyone could of predicted, especially compared to the main character's paleoclimatic models of the previous ice age, which would take thousands of years. The new models of this storm have it taking 6-8 weeks before a full blown ice age is on, and then in actuality it takes 7-10 days. Lets first assume that the Gulf Stream has just been shut off, a feasible feat in itself since we are having a major impact on it already. This will cause a gradual cooling of the northern hemisphere, a little more each year, until snow stops melting in the northern latitudes during the summer. Then as the snow cover increases the Earth becomes whiter, reflecting more sunlight, preventing the sun from warming us and cooling the planet down further until glaciers start to form and so on. In London the effects of the Gulf Stream being shut off are already beginning to show, where London is now cooler than it was in the not too distant past. So no matter how quickly the Gulf Stream were to stop, the Earth is too big a place to undergo a transition from moderate climate one week to frozen ice ball 7 days later.

Some of the results of the Gulf Stream getting cut off is the drop in water temperature surrounding the Gulf Stream. In the movie, the North Atlantic contains water buoys that measure drops in temperature and send out warnings when the water temp drops 13^oC. It was hard to tell how fast a drop needed to occur to set off the alarm, although it seemed like it was over a relatively short period of time. Even in the winter the water will not cool down that fast with currents and everything maintaining the heat trapped in the water. Even if the Gulf Stream is cut off, which is must be for the temperature to drop that quickly, the water would basically have to stop flowing and convecting for this to occur. Not a likely scenario. Especially since the water feeding the two main locations the movie are indicated (the yellow X's on the map to the left) are fed via cold weather currents. So the Gulf Stream being shut off is not even going to have an initial impact there, it is going to be further south, then gradually work its way towards those points. It definitely would not have dropped 13^oC over night.

- Flash Freezing -

0:39:40 - How fast can the temperature drop within the center of a storm? Ok, first we need to accept the previous notions that gigantic cold-weather hurricanes are possible (supercells). Assuming that, how fast can the temperature drop in the center (eye) of the storm? The temperature in the eye of a hurricane not only does not drop, it is actually warmer then the surrounding storm, so in a continentally sized storm the temperature should react similarly. Depending on the altitude within the eye the temperature can range from 0 to 10^oC warmer than the surrounding storm due to compression of the sinking air (AOML). But according to the movie the air is pulled down so fast from the upper troposphere that it does not have time to heat up. The coldest the upper troposphere gets is about -75^oC (-103^oF) and that is above the equator, the poles do not get that cold, only about -45^oC (-49^oF) (Wikipedia). So how do you get air that starts at -75^oC then warms on it's way down to the surface to eventually get air cold enough to freeze jet fuel at -150^oF? This is their basis for "flash freezing" things within the eye of the storm.

They also use this "flash freezing" to explain the frozen mammoth in the museum. The mammoth contains food still preserved in his mouth hence their explanation that he was flash frozen. This is a highly unrealistic view of animals that are frozen in glaciers. Being frozen within a glacier is not an isolated occurrence, it has happened on numerous occasions, like the frozen caveman found and several other mammoths, none had evidence of being flash frozen. The likely explanation is that the animal fell within a crack in the glacier, which are usually in abundance and can be tremendous in depth, and the animal was either killed from the fall or injured to the point that death was imminent. After that, the cold weather will preserve the remains of the animal intact, hence no flash freezing necessary.

Following that they flash froze a couple of helicopters in the eye of the storm (like explaining that part of the movie before it occured). The way they froze was from the air temperature dropping to -150^oF. Now we have already dispelled that flash freezing can occur in these conditions but what about freezing jet fuel in general? When does that occur? According to several websites the freezing of jet fuel occurs between -40 to -47^oC (-40 to -52.6^oF) (Chevron, Wikipedia.) This is about 100^o warmer then what they stated in the movie but it also allows for some plausibility in the freezing of the jet planes. Assuming that the air in the center of the storm is at it's coldest (-75^oC) and that when it gets lowered through the atmosphere the heating is minimal, then it is seemingly possible to freeze jet fuel and possibly take down a jet plane.

- Super-Flooding -

0:43:20 - As the movie moves along they started 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 in the northern hemisphere are affected as well. Flooding on this magnitude takes water, lots and lots of water. If all the ice caps were to melt, that would raise sea level 60-75 meters (Water World). This is assuming all the glacial ice were to melt, and in the movie it is obviously cold so all of the northern ice caps could not have melted. The level of flooding is around 72.5 meters (based on the Statue of Liberty for scale). This is not to bad for a tsunami but for flooding that is outrageous. Then to top that off after the initial "wave" the water level continues to rise by about a foot a minute (based on the rise of water level when he is making his phone call). So no only is the flooding unrealistic they even push beyond that to downright impossible, no matter what storm is occurring.

There is also another problem, the tsunami. A tsunami is generated from something like an earthquake, volcanic eruption, something that can displace large quantities of water. Nothing in the storm seemed able to generate that sort of force, although supercells have been known to cause flooding. All you had was the strong winds, which will move the water, but likely nothing on the magnitude seen in the movie. The only thing capable of that would have been a meteorite impact or a super eruption (different movies entirely). Also immediately following a tsunami, the water rapidly retreats due to the imbalance that is caused with the water being at higher ground then what gravity will allow it to be, so most of the water will return to the sea. This is contrary to the movie where not only does the water not retreat it rises.

- Glacier Formation -

1:02:58 - At the beginning of this section they redeem themselves a little more. What I mentioned before about the Earth being pulled into a perpetual cycle of cooling is described here. This is when the white snow reflects the sun, preventing warming and causing the Earth to cool even more. But then they ruin it again with how their "glaciers" form. Now they never call them glaciers but there is no doubt that this is what they actually are. Typical glaciers form in cold weather up in the northern latitudes when the snow fall is greater than the snow melt during the summer, hence more snow accumulates than can melt. This forms into a thick sheet of snow that eventually compresses into mostly ice. Then the continued snow fall at the beginning of the glacier pushes the front of the ice forward at a slow but steady rate, often millimeters to meters per year (meters on the really fast end). They usually form around a mile thick and can cover great distances, in the form of continental glaciers, like in Antarctica and Greenland. These are different then alpine glaciers which only form up the mountains and usually only near the tops where the weather is cold enough most of the year.

The "glaciers" in the movie, especially the one in NYC is about 212 feet (64.6 meters) thick (based on the Statue of Liberty.) So based on a glacier being a mile thick, this "glacier" is about 4% the thickness of a typical glacier. The "glacier" first formed from the "tsunami" that flooded the entire city, freezing all (or at least enough to make a stable surface) of the water then the snow fell on top of it. I don't know what that is but it is definitely not a glacier by any definition of the word.

Also, how long would it take to freeze that much water to a sustainable thickness? Typical salt water can freeze at -1.8^oC causing it to expel most of the salt in it. The colder the temperature the faster the water can freeze, and the faster it freezes, the more salt that can be contained within it. Although this will make the ice incredibly unstable when it starts to warm up. You can already assume the water is pretty cold to begin with since it is November off the shore of NYC, but it's salt water, so unless you send that water out into space there is no chance it is going to freeze in 2-3 days as portrayed in the movie. Even if the water was fresh water, this would be practically impossible (Water Encyclopedia).

- Scientific Input -

1:57:24 - The scientific advisor for the movie is Michael Molitor, PhD. Now I understand that most scientists do not want their names on these types of movies, understandably so, because they may destroy any credibility the scientist may have. So he is either assured of the movies message or believes in the science of the movie. Also most decisions about the plotline is essentially the choice of the director with the scientist's ideas taking a back seat. But in reality who is Dr. Molitor and what is his specialty in? He is the CEO of a company called the Climate Wedge and he is the former associate director of the Center for Environmental Research and Training at the University of California at San Diego (Zoominfo). For more info you can catch an interview with him here at ABC National Radio. He appears to realize that the movie takes place in an extremely condensed time frame but is excited about it because now people may be using less carbon burning products. So in general he is a super environmentalist with a post doc in global environmental research from Harvard. Seems he understood what was going to happen to the majority of the science in the movie, although I don't know if he understands what a glacier is.

- Overview (or important thoughts to take home) -

It is possible to cause an ice age from global warming
The hurricanes in the movie resemble supercells, which are rotating thunderstorms
Even though improbable the tornadoes in California are possible
Even the largest storm ever recorded is 1/12th the size it needs to be for the movie to be plausible
Jet fuel actually freezes around 50^oF, making plausible that the ~-75^oF air from the upper troposphere could freeze it
How do you flood a planet with more water than you have?
Glaciers move into places, they are not formed from frozen tsunami's

- Non-Geological Notes -

This is especially humorous now-a-days with all the focus on immigration and illegal immigrants from Mexico but Mexico closed their border to us. Now I do not want to sound all high and mighty and feel our country is the greatest but for a country that we have such problems with to be blocking their borders to us is a little ridiculous.

Why is there a Russian ship in the middle of NYC? It's not like they were trying to help us or anything because they just sailed in and stopped. The US military maybe I could see but a Russian ship? I do not see the point.

And who can leave out the memorable last line - "Have you ever seen the air so clear?"

I mean what can be a better conclusion to a global destruction movie then a comment on the air quality.

References Used and/or Cited

http://nsidc.org/iceshelves/larsenb2002/index.html

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=4442&method=full

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream

http://www.pilothouseonline.com/current/features/Text/jenifer%20clark's%20gulf%20stream.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troposphere

http://werme.8m.net/2016.html

http://www.eurometeo.com/english/climate/city_VIDP/id_GT/meteo_new%20delhi%20india

http://www.chaseday.com/hailstones.htm

http://www.bgrg.org/pages/education/alevel/coldenvirons/Gulfstream.htm

http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Re-St/Sea-Water-Freezing-of.html