What Is The Day After Tomorrow?
The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 disaster movie about climate change causing an ice age. It is based on a book titled “The Coming Global Superstorm,” written by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. The Day After Tomorrow was directed by Roland Emmerich, who is famous for creating other disaster movies, including both Independence Day movies, 1998 Godzilla (the one in New York), 2012, Moonfall, and others. Actors in the film include Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum and Sela Ward. The film was shot in Montreal, and at the time of this article, it has 45% on the Tomatometer and 50% on the Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes, and averages a 6.5 on IMDB. It is known as a popcorn movie with little depth, but great special effects. It has long been criticised for not being very scientifically accurate. This article will dive into how accurate those claims are.
Before The Storms
The film begins with three climatologists drilling in Antarctica, using ice from there to get climate records from thousands of years ago. This is an actual thing that happened, but the scene immediately takes an unrealistic turn, as the place they are drilling begins to crack, causing a piece of the continent to break off. We soon find out the part that broke off was the size of Rhode Island. Although there have been icebergs this large that have broken off in the past, this has always taken weeks at least, and many times it has taken years, while in this instance it took mere minutes.
We later learn that the scientists found evidence of an ice age 10,000 years ago that lasted for 200 years. People often believe that an ice age ended about 10,000 years ago, but this is untrue, partially because many people do not understand what an ice age is. Contrary to popular belief, an ice age doesn’t refer to most or all of the Earth being covered in ice; it refers to a time when there is permanent ice on Earth in at least one location. There are currently three places where there is ice year-round: the North Pole, Antarctica and Greenland. Although each of these three places have receding ice, this means we are currently in an ice age. The ice age we are in is called the Quaternary Glaciation. The last glacial period ended around 11,700 years ago, which might be the reason for the common misinterpretation.
The scientists also talk about how a freezing of the North Atlantic Current could lead to another ice age, stating that it could happen in several decades. This is accurate, although it would likely take even more than a few decades, let alone the small handful of days that it takes in the movie.
The movie then shows snow in New Delhi, which would be unusual, given that the city rarely experiences snow, as even winter lows are in the positives, although the snow there was shown as a big deal, and would be possible in a climate catastrophe. Japan experiences baseball-sized hail, which is possible, but very rare, and can do the damage shown, knocking someone out. It also shows an airplane flying through a hurricane-like storm, even though planes often fly over or around such storms for safety reasons. The movie also refers to a place called the Hedland Climate Research Centre in Scotland. Such a research centre does not exist.
The Storms
When the storms begin, the movie begins to go really off the rails as far as realism goes. The movie shows a total of 4 tornadoes in Los Angeles. Each of these tornadoes is shown doing massive damage, with skyscrapers being destroyed. As mentioned in the Sharknado article on this site, LA does get tornadoes, averaging a few per year. However, since 1950, they haven’t experienced anything higher than an F3 on the original Fujita scale, with even F3’s accounting for less than 1% of all confirmed tornadoes. This is not nearly enough to do the type of damage seen. The movie also shows meteorologists remaining in the path of tornadoes that were barreling towards them, an act which would never happen. The idea of two tornadoes merging into one, as displayed in the movie, however, is possible, although it more closely resembles one tornado absorbing the other, instead of a true fusion. People also endanger their own lives by taking photos of a tornado coming up on them quickly, which, unfortunately, has likely happened at some point.
There are problems beyond the tornadoes, however. There are a few little things related to terminology, such as it being mentioned that Australia is being hit by the largest Typhoon ever. A typhoon is what a hurricane is called in some parts of the world, and Australia does get hit by hurricanes, but they call them cyclones. The movie also shows large hurricane-like storms forming on land, over Canada, Europe and Siberia. This is impossible given that such storms don’t form over land, and they only form much closer to the equator since they are built by the presence of warm water. The storms are also shown as being much larger than is realistic, as the one over Canada ends up covering the entire country, which is 5514 km (3426 miles) wide. The largest such storm ever is Typhoon Tip, which formed in the Pacific Ocean, and is estimated to be 1380 km (2220 miles) wide. This would make these storms each 50% wider than the widest storm ever, with three of them forming at once, all over places much drier and colder than is normal. The storms then all get ever bigger, combining to cover almost the entire northern hemisphere at one point. These storms also behave more like blizzards and remain mostly stationary.
There are a few things that the movie gets right. It does accurately show the dangers of the calm ‘eye’ of the storm, giving people a false sense of safety, and the people who freeze outside would do so at the temperature shown, even if you take all the warming precautions to prevent frostbite. The people who left the library would freeze as shown in the movie. It also accurately shows blackouts happening at these temperatures.
There are also plenty of other things that the movie gets wrong, including being indoors being a way to automatically insulate everybody, and showing everything being frozen much quicker. While the movie does show it as cold enough to freeze almost anything, everything freezes much sooner than it would; even dry things freeze, despite the lack of water, meaning that there is nothing for it to freeze.
After The Storms
The storms die out fast, especially considering their power and size, all three dying out almost at the same time. However, the most unscientific thing in the entire movie is a politician (in this case, the vice-president) who claimed that climate change was impossible, admitted he was wrong when confronted with indisputable evidence.