Bindy Sombatsaphay

Professor Podratz

GEOG 1000

May 6, 2020

The movie I chose to watch for this essay was The Day After Tomorrow. The movie is

centered around global warming and how the government’s lack of care for it caused the entire

Earth’s weather system to change. There were many different natural disasters that occurred in

this film including tornadoes, hurricanes, and major tsunamis. The film displayed some accurate

scientific information, but also a lot of inaccuracies. Instead of focusing on a single natural

disaster that happened, I will be writing about the phenomenon that led to all of the natural

disasters.

The phenomenon that occurred in the film that caused all of the natural disasters was the

complete halt of the North Atlantic circulation and thermohaline circulation. These are ocean

currents that affect the climates in Europe and North America. It works like a big conveyor belt

where warm water from tropical areas flow north towards the poles, cools, sinks and flows back

south. Wind, temperature, and water salinity is what drives this conveyor belt, but when one of

those factors is changed the whole system is affected. If these circulations slowed down or

completely stopped, we could a see a significant climate change in Europe and North America.

Temperatures would become a lot more extreme during the different seasons, there would be

colder winters and hotter summers. It also has the ability of creating a lot more powerful storms

and hurricanes that can make landfall on east coast.

 In the film the cause of the stoppage of thermohaline circulation was the melting of very

large ice sheets in the polar regions due to global warming. The melting ice sheets introduced

fresh water into the ocean which affects the salinity of the water. This is accurate to how it would

happen in real life, however what happened next in the movie was overexaggerated. After the

melting ice sheets it was almost right away that the natural disasters began to form. There were

tornadoes in Los Angeles, extremely large hail in Japan, and a massive superstorm on the north

east coast. The melting ice also caused a giant tsunami that hit the New York area. After all of

that and what seems like almost instantaneously, the northern hemisphere went into a mass

cooling stage where snow and ice began to cover a significant part of North America. In real life

none of this would happen as suddenly or extremely as depicted in the movie.

The effects of these disasters if they happened in real life like they did in the movie

would be completely catastrophic. There would be countless lives loss as well as the destruction

of many infrastructures. There would be no way a country could be prepared for something like

this. Millions of Americans would be forced to move south and in the movie they went to

Mexico. If this was real life this would cause a major political problem between the two

countries. If we want to avoid this the government would need to address climate change a lot

more seriously than what they do now. Creating and enforcing laws that protect our environment

would help us avoid major catastrophe.

Works Cited:

Berwyn, B., Gearino, D., Berwyn, B., Fahys, J., Feldman, S., Lavelle, M., … Peevey, A. B.

(2018, June 15). Scientists Say Ocean Circulation Is Slowing. Here's Why You Should Care.

Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07052018/atlantic-ocean-

circulation-slowing-climate-change-heat-temperature-rainfall-fish-why-you-should-care

Morton, M. C. (2019, April 12). North Atlantic Circulation Patterns Reveal Seas of Change.

Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https://eos.org/articles/north-atlantic-circulation-patterns-reveal-

seas-of-change