The Day After Tomorrow (film)
"The Day After Tomorrow" is a science fiction film that dramatizes the arrival of a modern ice age triggered by rapid climate change. The narrative begins with the alarming thawing of glaciers and a significant drop in ocean temperatures, leading to unforeseen meteorological phenomena such as severe storms and tornadoes in unlikely regions. Central to the plot are scientists who predict an impending ice age, but their warnings are largely ignored by political leaders, resulting in widespread catastrophe. While inspired by the Younger Dryas period, which experienced dramatic climate change over decades, the film’s portrayal of rapid global cooling occurring within days is considered sensationalized and not aligned with scientific consensus.
The film raises awareness of potential environmental risks, particularly those related to human-induced climate change and the role of greenhouse gases. Despite its fictional elements, it underscores the interconnectedness of ecological systems and the potential consequences of disrupting climate patterns. Ultimately, "The Day After Tomorrow" serves as a cautionary tale about the urgent need to address climate issues, even as it exaggerates the speed and scale of the changes that might occur. The film has sparked discussions on climate change, emphasizing the importance of scientific understanding and preparedness in the face of environmental threats.
The Day After Tomorrow (film)
Date: Released 2004
Director: Roland Emmerich (1955– )
Background
The motion picture The Day After Tomorrow is a fictional depiction of the advent of a modern ice age. Brandishing elaborate special effects and generic political characters who ignore the warnings of prominent scientists that a global climate change is coming upon them, the movie attempts to explain how a rapid climate change can occur. Based on the concept of the Younger Dryas period, a much-debated dramatic cooling that occurred in northern Europe approximately ten thousand years ago, The Day After Tomorrow attempts to engage with modern climate change concerns.
The movie begins with a slice of reality—the thawing of the glaciers. A massive chunk of the arctic ice shelf breaks away from the continent. Scientists monitoring the temperatures in the ocean note a thirteen-degree drop in water temperatures in multiple locations off Greenland. Events go awry on a worldwide scale shortly thereafter. A critical desalination of the oceans' water occurs, shifting ocean currents and wreaking havoc on the world’s climate. The planet is besieged by bizarre weather changes. Snowstorms, brick-sized hail, massive wind shears, and tornadoes begin to affect regions where such meteorological events had never occurred before. Scientists quickly develop a climate model based on these occurrences that predicts the arrival of a new ice age within six to eight weeks. Politicians ignore this prediction, thereby dooming millions.
Significance for Climate Change
The events depicted in The Day After Tomorrow, while based on actual scientific theories, are presented in a sensationalized way. One gigantic storm covers the globe and plunges the world into a new ice age. These events take place in a matter of days, not months or years.
Most scientific experts agree that a cataclysmic climate change would not happen so quickly. Even the Younger Dryas period, with its radical climate change, is speculated to have taken seventy years to develop. Ice-core samples confirm that the changes to the climate took a significant period of time to occur. According to widely accepted beliefs, a climate change of the magnitude depicted in The Day After Tomorrow would be gradual by human temporal standards, evolving over the course of ten to fifty years. An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrialization and poor regulation is expected to double the levels of CO2 over the course of the next century. A slow warming trend is expected, but is unlikely to lead to the type of rapid climate change depicted in the film.
Even with the realization that The Day After Tomorrow is more a work of fiction than of fact, one is left with the fear that the events depicted in the film are possible. A widely publicized research study on the ocean’s thermohaline circulation—the flow of tropical waters to the Earth’s northern polar region—has indicated that, if the water’s flow should abruptly cease, it could lead to rapid and severe climate change in Great Britain and western Europe. Such an occurrence could cause a miniature ice age to befall that region in only a matter of years.
The notion that the thermohaline circulation could stop may be based on scientific principles, but it is also reliant on speculation and conjecture. Climate models, such as the ones depicted in the film, cannot take into account the millions of variables required accurately to predict what will occur given specific stimuli. The Earth’s climate and oceanic flows are just too complex for such accuracy.
Still, The Day After Tomorrow does represent in stylized fashion actual risks to the environment. Unlike the Younger Dryas period, during which nature alone created a climate change, human intervention into the delicate balance of atmospheric and oceanic concerns can only upset the equilibrium further. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have the potential to raise the Earth’s temperature, causing the polar ice caps to melt and drop billions of tons of freshwater into the oceans, thereby causing the desalination depicted in the film. It is conjectured that such events are already occurring and are interfering with polar ecosystems.
As was true during the Younger Dryas period, life-forms—both animal and plant—are the first indicators that something is wrong with the ecosystem. Plant life, acclimated to specific temperatures and climates, will slowly diminish and die when climate changes occur. Animals that feed on the plant life either have to adjust to the loss of a food source or perish as well. The Day After Tomorrow fails to denote this fact, although it could certainly be implied from the events depicted in the film that animal life perished on the same scale as human life.
As a piece of entertainment, The Day After Tomorrow is an engaging and thought-provoking film. It depicts a future no one wants to come to fruition—a new ice age. This ice age occurs in a matter of days, throwing the world into chaos and killing billions. While an effective argument against the horrors of climate change and environmental abuse, The Day After Tomorrow depicts a rapid descent into a new ice age that is highly unlikely. It is more probable that slow change will occur and that humankind will be able to take the necessary steps to ensure its survival.
Bibliography
Fagan, Brian M. The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850. Jackson: Basic, 2001. Print.
Frankopan, Peter. The Earth Transformed: An Untold History.New York: Knopf, 2023. Print.
Pearce, Fred. With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change. Boston: Beacon, 2008. Print.
Weart, Spencer R. The Discovery of Global Warming. Rev. and expanded ed. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 2008. Print.