Latest Study Warns “Day After Tomorrow” Ice Age Closer Than We Think

When the apocalyptic film first released, critics from both the entertainment and science communities ridiculed the movie over the possibility of climate change having such an extreme affect on the world. However, a recent study by researchers from the University of Southampton has found that we are closer to a “Day After Tomorrow” scenario than we thought.

In the film, climate warming results in the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – a major current in the Atlantic Ocean that has a northward flow of warm, salty water in the upper layers of the Atlantic and a southward flow of colder water in the deep Atlantic. This leads to New York being flooded, tornadoes in Los Angeles, and finally the north hemisphere freezing and experiencing an Ice Age.

Researchers discovered that if global warming and the collapse of the AMOC occur at the same time, the Earth will cool for a period of 20 years. After the 20 years, global warming would continue as if the AMOC never collapsed and the global average temperature would offset by approximately 0.8 degrees Celsius. They used an advanced climate model at Germany’s Max-Planck Institute to simulate the conditions.

“The planet earth recovers from the AMOC collapse in about 40 years when global warming continues at present-day rates, but near the eastern boundary of the North Atlantic (including the British Isles) it takes more than a century before temperature is back to normal,” Professor Sybren Drijfhout, from Ocean and Earth Science Department at the University of Southampton, said in the release.

The AMOC depends on a connect of the warm north waters and the cool southern waters that flow deep in the North Atlantic. Due to global warming, the Greenland ice sheet has begun to melt into the AMOC, affecting the balance of the warm and cold waters. Currently, it is causing the AMOC to slow down, but it will eventually collapse.

While the climate sequence in the movie is sped up and exaggerated, the researchers still noted that the consequences from the AMOC collapse would be no less cause for worry.

The simulation showed that Western Europe would be hit the hardest by cold temperatures but America would have to contend with floods. Sea levels on the U.S. East Coast would rise more than three feet, and the UK, Denmark, and the Netherlands would see a 35-degree temperature drop.

“This would affect hundreds of millions of people,” Drijfhout said, “At least temporarily, Europe would suffer conditions that would look like the Little Ice Age of the Middle Ages.”

“When it comes to climate change, we are playing a dangerous game,” he added.

Scientists Say Odds Good Seattle Will Be Destroyed By Earthquake

A group of scientists say that a long overdue earthquake for the Pacific Northwest will strike in the next 50 years and will completely wipe out the city of Seattle.

A new report in the New Yorker highlights the problems of the Cascadia subduction zone which runs for 700 miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest from Cape Mendocino, California through Vancouver Island.  The zone is named after the Cascade Range of volcanic mountains that runs much of the same course about 100 miles inland.

The amount of time between quakes averages 243 years and because the last major quake took place in 1700, the fault is 72 years past the average date for a major quake.

Katheryn Schulz of the New Yorker spoke with Kenneth Murphy who oversees FEMA’s Region X which encompasses Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.  He said that when the “big one” hits…either a partial giving way of the southern part of the zone resulting in an 8.0-8.6 quake or a full-margin rupture between 8.7 and 9.2…there will no longer be a Pacific northwest.

“Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast,” Murphy told the New Yorker.  FEMA estimates say that 13,000 people will die in the quake and resulting tsunami.  At least 27,000 will suffer some kind of major injury.

Cities that are west of Interstate 5 include Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene and the capitals of Oregon (Salem) and Washington (Olympia).

“This is one time that I’m hoping all the science is wrong, and it won’t happen for another thousand years,” Murphy says.

Chris Goldfinger, a paleoseismologist at Oregon State University and one of the world’s leading experts, says that the chance of the “big one” taking place in the next 50 years is 1 in 3.