The Environment After Tomorrow

By Cailin Reedy

Buildings collapse in 2012 as a result of global natural disaster.

America loves the apocalypse. Movies like "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012" describe the potential consequences of environmental disaster: volcanoes erupt, ice storms cover New York, and half of California falls into the ocean. But these consequences might not be as far-fetched as we think.

According to research conducted by the University of Southampton, global warming could actually cause a period of falling temperatures if it occurs in tandem with a collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. The AMOC is the ocean current that forces cold water southward and warm water to the north. The research used the state-of-the-art climate model ECHAM at the Max-Planck Institute in Hamburg, Germany.

In "The Day After Tomorrow," global warming and the AMOC collapse kick off intense and immediate global change, including a violent freeze-over of the entire northern hemisphere. In "2012," the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts and begins a chain of freak natural accidents: super tidal waves overturn cruise liners out at sea, earthquakes destroy the west coast, mountains shift and billions of people die.

But the realistic predictions are much less dramatic. Research found that if such a collapse occurred in tandem with global warming, the Earth would cool for 20 years. Global warming would continue as normal, but with an offset of -33.44 degrees Fahrenheit. The Earth would return to normal temperatures within 40 years, the research predicted, but the area near the eastern boundary of the North Atlantic would take up to a century to return to normal.

Although the real changes might not be as dramatic as the movies would have us believe, these cinematic predictions aren’t as wild as we think. Even the most far-fetched environmental action flick has its basis in science. And unless people around the world change what we can for the better, someday we’ll be faced with the reality of the day after tomorrow.