Could ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ happen?
A researcher has produced a scientific study of the climate scenario featured in the disaster movie 'The Day After Tomorrow'. In the 2004 film, climate warming caused an abrupt collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), leading to catastrophic events such as tornadoes destroying Los Angeles, New York being flooded and the northern hemisphere freezing. Although the scientific credibility of the film drew criticism from climate scientists, the scenario of an abrupt collapse of the AMOC, as a consequence of anthropogenic greenhouse warming, was never assessed with a state-of-the-art climate model.Now scientists have found that, for a period of 20 years, the earth will cool instead of warm if global warming and a collapse of the AMOC occur simultaneously.