Scientists who initially dismissed the 11-year-old film are now saying it may accurate reflect reality.
Hollywood rarely gets anything right when it comes to the facts in its science-fiction films, but in the case of the 2004 film “The Day After Tomorrow,” it may have hit the nail on the head.
Dismissed by scientists when it was released 11 years ago, “The Day After Tomorrow” featured an apocalyptic future where New York City is frozen over and catastrophic storms wreak havoc due to a disruption in the North Atlantic Current, according to a TomDispatch report.
But now scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say that the film may be closer to reality than they gave it credit for.
The reason it was dismissed initially was because scientists believe that the effects of global warming would be linear and gradual, but in recent years they’ve come to believe that there are actually “tipping points” that can lead to sudden drastic changes, and disruption of the North Atlantic Current as depicted in the film is not far-fetched at all.
This pivotal event in the film involves disrupting this current, often called a global conveyer belt that sends warm Caribbean waters up north in the Atlantic where it results in warmer temperatures in Europe and North America than there otherwise would be. But if it were to be disrupted — say, by a melting Greenland ice sheet that would introduce huge volumes of fresh water that would disrupt this cycle — it could cause tremendous and catastrophic changes. And scientists say the Greenland ice sheet is indeed melting at a significant rate.
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