What The Day After Tomorrow Got Right About Changing Oceans & Climate
Written by Gosephine Lizzi
Edited by Claudia Reines
It’s not difficult to imagine what a future shaped by anthropogenic climate change might look like, because that future is already unfolding. Its consequences expand far beyond a warming Earth, ice caps melting and sea levels rising. These effects are also unequal, often affecting marginalized and underdeveloped communities more severely than the nations that have contributed the most to the problem.
The 2004 sci-fi film The Day After Tomorrow attempts to convey the extent of these changes, particularly with a focus on the United States. In the movie, a vital component of global ocean circulation, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, suddenly collapses. Severe weather follows: tornadoes flatten Los Angeles, storm surges flood the U.S. East Coast, and the Northern Hemisphere rapidly freezes.
AMOC, driven by temperature and salinity differences, stretches across both hemispheres of the Atlantic. While silent and unseen, it plays a major role in regulating climate through heat transfer. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the ocean as a whole absorbs around 90% of excess heat trapped in Earth’s climate system, ultimately slowing down global warming rates and mitigating climate change effects.
AMOC in particular is unique and important to our planet and its habitability because it carries warm surface water from the tropics toward the North Atlantic, where it releases heat, cools, and then sinks. The cold water flows deep in the ocean and back toward the equator helping maintain balanced temperature and weather conditions across the world, especially in Europe and North America.
As the movie portrays, AMOC is actually at risk of slowing down and possibly collapsing. But what exactly does it mean for a component of ocean circulation to collapse? When a current system collapses, its flow weakens significantly or stops entirely, disrupting the movement of waters across entire ocean basins. AMOC’s slowdown can likely be attributed to melting ice sheets in the North Atlantic resulting in fresher, less dense waters at the surface. Since these surface waters would be too fresh and light to sink, the circulation process as a whole would be disrupted.
Where The Day After Tomorrow veers from actual scientific logic is the speed at which AMOC’s collapse and its effects occur. Luckily, it’s not possible for a major ocean circulation mechanism to simply stop or collapse within a few days. The observed slowdown of AMOC has taken place over decades and, in many climate models, is projected to continue to slow in the coming decades to centuries. Some simulations suggest AMOC will slow down but not collapse this century, while others predict that a total collapse is possible within a few centuries. However, the timeline for AMOC’s slowdown is still heavily debated within the scientific community.
While we don’t have to worry about extreme weather and the Northern Hemisphere freezing overnight, AMOC’s slowdown and collapse would likely result in more intense severe weather, cooling in parts of the North Atlantic while the rest of the globe warms, and as the film suggested, possible flooding along the U.S. East Coast. Additionally, while the movie focused on the United States, the collapse of AMOC is projected to also increase rainfall and alter monsoon systems in regions that contribute little to climate change and global warming.
The Day After Tomorrow demonstrates how our oceans impact our climate and what could happen when that balance is disrupted. Cinema can be used as a tool for advocacy and can raise awareness in a more digestible format. Films like The Day After Tomorrow are most effective as a starting point for discussing the communities most impacted by climate change rather than as warnings intended to frighten audiences or increase climate anxiety
Gosephine Lizzi ’28 is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at gl538@cornell.edu.
