Could 'The Day After Tomorrow' come true?

Question

Okay yeah it probably could but what's the likelihood of it happening that quickly and on that scale?

Answer 1

The idea of an entire ocean basin freezing that rapidly is ridiculous.  There would be far too much latent heat released to be dissipated in only a few hours as portrayed in the movie.  Take the surface area of the N. Atlantic that froze in the movie to be on order of 4 million square kilometers.  Assume that only the top 2 meters of the sea surface froze.  That gives 8 trillion cubic meters of ice formed (neglecting the expansion of ice as it freezes).  The heat of fusion of water is 333 J/gram, there is 8x10^18 grams of water in 8 trillion cubic meters, which means that 1.33x10^21 joules get released when that water freezes.  Say that happens over 3 hours, or around 10,000 s, that means the average power that has to be dissipated is 1.33x10^17 Watts.  That is a huge number!

But wait!  I hear you cry, if you normalize that over the surface area, won't it be a reasonable number?  Good point Watson.  Let's divide that number by the 4 trillion square meters of surface area (4 trillion square meters = 4 million square kilometers) and you get a relatively modest number of 33 kW/m^2 of heat you need to get rid of.  Of course, a huge heat flux out of the ocean surface is 1/100 of that number, 300 W/m^2, so even figure of 33 kW/m^2 is huge.  

If you turn the numbers sideways, you can see that it takes around 10 days given a 300 W/m^2 flux to freeze that much water, except once the top layer has turned to ice, the heat flux goes way way down.  Ice covered ocean heat fluxes top out at around 30 W/m^2, meaning it would take about 100 days to freeze the ocean.  

Huh.  100 days.  That should sound familiar.  That's about the time it takes the Arctic Ocean to freeze over every winter.  Go figure.

I won't bore you with the details of why "stratospheric air flash freezing" things is complete utter physical nonsense, but it is.  Descending air *has* to heat, not cool, unless you think thermodynamics is wrong.  

Physics.  It's what's for dinner.

Answer 2

Not even close.  It's a typical Hollywood disaster flick. They take a few single grains of truth and create an entire beach from it. If you're interested in a reasonable explanation to global warming, read what actual scientific research organizations (like NASA, NOAA, UCAR, etc.) say about it:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/G...

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/glob...

http://www.ucar.edu/news/features/climat...

http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~sherwood/...

Dumdum - I don't suppose you can name any climate scientist from NASA (those are the "alarmists" right?) or any other scientific research organizations acknowledging the theory of AGW that has ever even remotely suggested that the conditions of "The Day After Tomorrow" were plausible?

Answer 3

The "Day After Tomorrow" is as scientifically accurate as "The Core"

and thats not saying much really, Hollywood has never been very good at science/physics whether it's being thrown 10 feet through the air by one of Dirty harry bullets or all those noisy explosions in a vacuum in Star Wars et al. All these movies usually have a scientific adviser, whose advice they usually ignore.

DAT from the opening scene is wrong and goes downhill after that with inverted cyclones that suck super cold air down from the stratosphere to ice ages that start over a weekend.

Answer 4

When you wake up two days from now you will be living in "The Day After Tomorrow" as for the movie, no a glaciation period would never happen that fast.

Answer 5

Who knows with all these nuclear bombs we're setting off and everything else we're doing to the world, only right for it to detox itself.

Answer 6

That movie was real

Answer 7

No it couldn't it was based off a fictional book.  There is no likelyhood of it happening at all

Answer 8

For decades, environmentalism has been the Left's best excuse for increasing government control over our actions in ways both large and small. It's for Mother Earth! It's for the children! It's for the whales!

But until now, the doomsday-scenario environmental scares they've trumped up haven't been large enough to give the sinister prize they want most of all: total control of American politics, economic activity, and even individual behavior.

Answer 9

The day after tomorrow will definitely come the day after tomorrow.

Answer 10

NO - SORRY, DUDE - CHECK THIS OUT:

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/day...

Answer 11

That won't happen. Global Warming is a scare tactic used by the media so you can pay for their stupid "documentaries" and then they can go on vacation and pay for hookers.

Answer 12

bum, hannahs grandpa beat me to it

Answer 13

NO!!! not if we all be stupid and pollute. we all need to do soething to stop polluting.like china they dont care they are going to build another 25 nuclear stations by 2008. plus it will be the first population to be the largest. they are also doing the olympics but not doing the human rights.

Answer 14

It wont happen if people start recycling and stop polluting the air.

Answer 15

Impossible. It will never happen.

Answer 16

I don't know but we should try to avoid it at all cause......

Answer 17

Don't forget 'Earthquake'. I know it's a bit old now, but the big one is sure to strike at any moment.

Answer 18

No but AGW alarmists want you to think so so that you will willingly surrender your money and your freedom.

Answer 19

If it does, the government sure woun`t help much!