Preface

I saw the movie the day it opened. It fits the formula pretty well - the really good guys survive but only after facing several life threatening events. Some of the disposable good guys die. The closest thing to a bad guy comes around to right-thinking, and the science is abused mercilessly. The worst science gaffes are the storm surge that floods New York (I think the winds had to be blowing offshore and the storm was moving away, anyway) and the claims that the air in the eye was pulled down from the top of the troposphere so quickly it didn't have time to warm up so it remains -150°F. (It's really closer to -50°F, anyway....)

I think the movie would have a better impact on people if they left the theater into January conditions. Leaving a frozen New York and 50 foot drifts to head into a snow-free parking lot ruins the mood, such as it is.

Greenland

Despite its name, Greenland is covered with ice. A lot of ice. Back in Viking days the climate was warmer than it is now and the Greenland coast was hospitable enough for some farming colonies. However, the interior was still cold and still accumulating ice each year.

Between 1989 to 1992 scientists went to the center of Greenland and extracted an ice core all the way down to bedrock - 3029 meters. The core chronicles some 200,000 years of climate and other data, and has provided a fascinating look at climate, forest fires, biomass production, and human activity.

A report says

The d18O [the Oxygen isotope ratio of Oxygen-18 to Oxygen-16] records confirm that large and rapid temperature oscillations have occurred through most of the last 110,000 year period. They are of a scale that has not been experienced during the past 10,000 years in which human society mainly developed.

Especially astonishing are the very short times needed for major warmings. A temperature increase of 5°C can occur in a few decades.

The Ocean Conveyor

Recently oceanographers have put forth a theory that these sudden changes are due to a disruption in the conveyor system near Greenland and even more recently ocean data shows that we may be at the start of the first such disruption in the last 8,000 years.

While everyone has heard about global warming, not many people are aware of this theory. I started writing this page just before the release of the summer 2004 disaster movie The Day after Tomorrow. While it does adapt the abrupt climate change theory, apparently it's more based on an Art Bell and Whitley Strieber book, The Coming Superstorm. Nevertheless, the movie should at least get the theory into mainstream discussion.

The Gulf Stream

Polar/Northern North Atlantic currents

A handful of water

Recently though, the climate has been warming. Increased precipitation and melting in the north has made your cousins less salty, and hence lighter even as your increased evaporation has made you denser. Over the course of several years - just an instant of geologic time - your younger siblings mix with their cousins and even sink before reaching Europe. Europe cools some 5°C (9°F) degrees, about half the temperature decline during the last Ice Age.

Ice Age or "just" Ice Age Conditions

Still, we're not talking about the "Little Ice Age" which was only the reduction of a couple degrees, we're talking more along the line of the event some 8,200 years ago where a large glacial lake drained and freshened northern Atlantic waters. While the lake only took a year or so to drain, it depressed temperatures for some 50 years.

Links to further information

The above is way too sketchy, I'll add to it as time permits. Still, my major goal with this page is just to sketch out an overview and provide links to better sites with more detail.

My best resource in writing this page comes from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and in particular their new Ocean and Climate Change Institute. They recently added their look at the movie, http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/abruptclimate_dayafter.html but their other pages have more meat.

• http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/climatechange_wef.html
  This is the page I would have liked to write. It was written for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2003. It has Quicktime animations (disable any pop-up blocking tools you have), graphs of cold water salinity declines, and a graph of Greenland temperatures since near the end of the last Ice Age.

• http://www.wunderground.com/education/thedayafter.asp
  This is a good critique of the movie by a meteorologist. He has a fair amount to say about the Bell & Strieber book and describes several impossibilities with the movie.

• http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2004/climate.shtml
  The National Center for Atmospheric Research does a lot of climate research. Their page gives a little different perspective on things, and they have a graphic that may be the only one on the subject that shows the Gulf Stream near the Carolinas.

• http://www.datameteo.com/correntegolfo.htm
  This news article draws heavily from the above but is useful because it has comments from other scientists.

• http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/activities/forum_2002_alley.htm
  This is a transcript from a lecture on the event 8,200 years ago when glacial Lake Agassiz, in present day Canada, drained through Hudson's Bay into the Atlantic and disrupted the Gulf Stream.

• http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/6d7589a0ee50ce22ec0ce79d94f213cf,0/ox.html
  This weird URL is meant to be accessed from http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/p4.html. It's an introduction to the "North Atlantic Oscillation," a well known weather phenomenon that affects hurricane formation and weather patterns on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

• http://www.mail-archive.com/ecofem@csf.colorado.edu/msg08828.html
  This is really at http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17711, but alternet seems to have saved it for members. The link above goes to a copy. The article is a good example of when a reporter gets in over his head and reaches for the adverbs. If you've read the previous links you won't be as shocked and amazed. (Note that the word "astonishing" appears in a quote above, but at least it comes from an amazed scientist!)

• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0317_040317_elnino.html
  This reports on researchers looking into periods of warming during Ice Ages and the possibility they are triggered by El Nino events.

• http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/01/pr0192.htm
  This brief 2001 report predates much of the above. It's useful mainly to show how much thinking has changed in the last few years.

Epilogue and random thoughts

Move the Gulf Stream south or sink it early?

Why does the movie have these -150°F storms, anyway?

"Before I arrived at the site, Herz had partially dug away the hill of earth round the body, and so both the forefeet and the hind feet were exposed. These lay under the body so that it rested on them. When one looked at the body one had the impression that it must have suddenly fallen into an unexpected fissure in the ice, which it probably came across in its wanderings, and which may have been covered with a layer of plant-bearing mould. After its fall the unlucky animal must have tried to get out of its hopeless position, for the right forefoot was doubled up and the left stretched forward as if it had struggled to rise. But its strength had apparently not been up to it, for when we dug it out still farther we found that in its fall it had not only broken several bones, but had been almost completely buried by the falls of earth which tumbled in on it, so that it had suffocated.

"Its death must have occurred very quickly after its fall, for we found half-chewed food still in its mouth, between the back teeth and on its tongue, which was in good preservation. The food consisted of leaves and grasses, some of the later carrying seeds. We could tell from these that the mammoth must have come to its miserable end in the autumn."

At least the movie had a science advisor, maybe

Contact Ric Werme or return to his home page.

Written 2004 May 26. Last updated 2004 June 13.