Diamond Enthusiast
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Today we are being introduced to knew concepts of storms. We no longer think of hurricanes along the lines of 5 categories, their are now "super hurricanes" and the most dreaded "hyper-cane".
Super hurricanes are category 5, the strongest recorded storm on earth. The Hyper-cane takes the science of meteorology and our little understanding of the engines of hurricanes (ocean heat, water vapor, wind patterns, etc) and theorizes what would happen if a hurricane is fed more energy and is pressed to remain over warmer water collecting more heat.
The "cyclonic" super storms of The Day After tomorrow takes it a step further, it places a large importance upon a larger imbalance between heat and cool air masses that spawn a Hyper-cane over land which is so tall and so huge that it affects and stirs up the atmosphere from ground all the way out to the coldest reaches of our atmosphere. One thing those storms where missing was a source of heat.
hurricanes die over land, they only live as long as they have oceanic heat and water to feed them. Once over land a hurricane falls apart rapidly losing energy. If a hurricane passes over land, losing energy, and happens to strike back out to sea it can revive.
The Super Storms of TDAT were over land - thus there was this huge flaw in the theory, where did the energy come from?
What basis for this movie?
Here are some things we do know:
1. Fast frozen animals have been found in the tundras. Mammoths have been found, flash frozen - so fast that their last meal is not digested nor even partially decomposed. We know that these animals where huge and must have had a respectable thermal mass somehow they froze near instantly (in a manner of minutes, perhaps an hour or two)and that all of the body heat had to be removed quickly.
2. We know that Ice covered a far larger area of the earth than it does today. We also have evidence that at one point in earths history the whole planet was frozen over, way back before fish and land animals. We are also aware that a few degrees cooler was part of the cause of the Dark Ages. Geologically speaking human history has taken place in a brief temperate season of earth's more violent grand seasons of climate change.
3. We know that sudden changes are the norm, for instance there is evidence that great sudden "thaws" lead to super floods which washed away hundreds of miles of top soil in certain regions of the world. We know that there have been many extinction level events which more study narrows the window of how long it took for them to happen - Sudden Deaths of a geological time period are narrowing to a generation or decades of time.
4. We also know that the earth is undergoing interesting times and that there is evidence for "global warming".
There is a precedence here of evidence which suggests that sudden extreme climate change happens. There is strong evidence that when Snowball earth (when the earth was completely covered in ice) Thawed due to a build up of Carbon dioxide and green house gasses released by volcanism that it was a sudden, violent event where ice cracked and storms raged and vast quantities of water shifted from land to sea.
Other evidence from other periods of time suggest that though the reasons why climate change takes place builds up gradually, the change itself takes place quickly - nearly instantaneously the earth reaches a breaking point in its systems regulating climate and weather and shifts gears over a short period of time.
Presently we are measuring the speed of the great pumps in the Ocean currents. The main current, the super highway of the sea, is slowing. This is due to more fresh water, colder water being dumped at the poles. However we also note that we are not witnessing a tremendous break down in climate - least ways not as much as we would expect with this slowing. This suggests that the "pumps" can slow down and speed up but due the thermal mass and the inertia of the whole system the output of change is not that measurable in the short term.
From this observed phenomena, a theory is out there that the mechanics governing the system of climate and weather may undergo gradual changes and the outcome could be a build up to a sudden "break" in the system. Meaning that though the ocean currents are slowing down the sheer momentum of all of that energy keeps us going for a while longer. It has been suggested that when the momentum is used up that the changes in climate will be more of a snap instead of a gradual slip due to the registering of the "loss" of energy takes place later than the loss of energy.
This is the theory behind the movie. But the Movie does not in anyway poise the theory in a time line which the theory covers. Yes the theory suggests that a sudden climate break can take place - Sudden in geologic terms.
BUT - it does not all take place over a week's time. This would take place over years, perhaps decades. Yes there could be sudden local isolated cases where sudden drop in temperatures from temperate to sub freezing take place, but this would be more in relation to a sudden blizzard than a sucking of the colder upper atmosphere down to earth. Again it would take minutes or an hour or two for a "sudden" freeze - not seconds, and not in the dropping layer of freezing air as depicted in TDAT. This means you wouldn't have to run to shelter, you could walk it at a brisk pace - only a prolonged exposure would lead to death and "sudden freezing".
In reality the conditions that would lead to a "fast freeze" already exist in the north and southern extremes. A "sudden" blizzard in Antarctica brings with it not only colder temperatures but freezing wind which sucks the warmth away from the body quickly. It is assumed that Mammoths migrated south in the winter, and returned northward in the spring. It is not at all uncommon for a late blizzard to take place, the tundras of Siberia and Alaska are cold places all the time, a sudden blizzard in late spring catching a mammoth out there eating would easily kill it and "fast freeze" it a scenario which not only possible but obviously took place many times. We must remember that a mammoth had no warm house to go to, its chance of survival was hundreds of miles away, not a few blocks to a warm home.
We see this phenomena taking place during the winter months in New England, the North Eastern states where colder air from the north sweeps down south and causes a "sudden" drop in temperature. Sudden as in hours, not seconds.
TDAT condensed a process into weeks of time a process which is more gradual in the human lifetime but is dramatic and "instantaneously" in the geological record. This is not to say that freak hyper storms as depicted in TDAT are not possible - anything is possible, it is just to say that it is highly improbable that such storms could take place. If they could, they would be more like the Red Spot of Jupiter, storms which gain life and then keep going for centuries.
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