Could ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ Climate Scenario Really Materialize?

Other scientists said while a few of the things in the film are likely to happen, as people are messing with the Earth in ways they never have, another ice age seems extremely unlikely – at least not how it is depicted in the film. This causes a chain reaction where warm water stops flowing from the Caribbean to the north Atlantic, triggering a huge disruption in the climate – something that IPCC scientists now say is a distinct possibility.

Science fiction films are more often than not exaggerated, however, Hollywood film “The Day After Tomorrow” released in 2004 could apparently be a real life climate disaster according to a new study.

Drijfhout also reveals that Earth will be able to recover from an AMOC collapse in a span of 40 years even if global warming still continues at current rates however the eastern region of the North Atlantic ocean that includes the British Isles will apparently take more than 100 years for temperatures to return to normal.

A collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) leads to global cooling through fast feedbacks that selectively amplify the response in the Northern Hemisphere.

Researchers from the University of Southampton congregated on a scientific study regarding climate change framework that was pictured in that sci-fi movie.

The global warming would continue as if the collapse of the AMOC never had occurred, but with the temperature of the world on average being offset 0.8 degrees Celsius.

A collapse of the enormous ocean currents that circulate warm water around Atlantic could cool the planet so much that it would obliterate global warming for up to 20 years.

“It can be excluded, however, that this hiatus period was exclusively caused by changes in atmospheric forcing, either due to volcanic eruptions, more aerosols emissions in Asia, or reduced greenhouse gas emissions”, said Sybren.

Rather than the flow moving into the oceans on Earth from the atmosphere, it moves from the large bodies of water to the atmosphere. “A similar reversal of energy flow is also visible at the top of the atmosphere”, Drijfhout explained.

With that said, the recent period of very weak warming can not be attributed to one single cause.

“These very different fingerprints in energy flow between atmospheric radiative forcing and internal ocean circulation processes make it possible to attribute the cause of a climate hiatus period”, he added. Most probably El Niño plays a role and possibly also changes in the Southern Ocean due to shifting and increasing westerlies.