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This article is about the 2004 theatrical disaster film dealing with global warming. For the 1983 made for television movie about nuclear war, see The Day After. For other uses, see The Day After Tomorrow (disambiguation).

The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow theatrical poster
Directed by	Roland Emmerich
Produced by	Roland Emmerich & Mark Gordon
Written by	Roland Emmerich (story) Roland Emmerich & Jeffery Nachmanoff (screenplay)
Starring	Dennis Quaid Jake Gyllenhaal Emmy Rossum Sela Ward Ian Holm Jay O. Sanders Kenneth Welsh Tamlyn Tomita
Music by	Harald Kloser
Cinematography	Ueli Steiger
Editing by	David Brenner
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	May 28, 2004 (worldwide)
Running time	124 minutes
Language	English French Japanese
Budget	$125,000,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 apocalyptic science-fiction film that depicts catastrophic effects of global warming and boasts high-end special effects, bending the lines between science, reality, and science fiction. Worldwide, it is the 45th top grossing film of all time, with total revenue of US $542,771,772. It is the second highest grossing movie not to be #1 in the US box office (behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding). It currently holds the record for biggest opening weekend gross for any movie not opening at #1 with $68.7 million. The movie was filmed mostly in Montreal, and, as of 2007, is the highest grossing Hollywood film in history to be filmed in Canada.

The Day After Tomorrow premiered in Mexico City on May 17, 2004 and was released worldwide from May 26 to May 28 except in South Korea and Japan where it was released June 4 and June 5, respectively. The film was originally planned for release in summer 2003.

Contents 1 Background 2 Synopsis 3 Plot 4 Science portrayed in the movie 5 Reception 6 DVD Details 6.1 Releases 6.2 Deleted scenes 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

The movie was inspired by The Coming Global Superstorm,^[1] a book co-authored by Coast to Coast AM talk radio host Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. Strieber also wrote the film's novelization.

Shortly before and during the release of the movie, members of environmental and political advocacy groups distributed pamphlets to moviegoers describing what they believe to be the possible effects of global warming.^[2] Although the film depicts some effects of global warming predicted by scientists, like rising sea levels, more destructive storms, and disruption of ocean currents and weather patterns, it depicts these events happening much more rapidly and severely than is considered scientifically plausible, and the theory that a "superstorm" will create rapid worldwide climate change does not appear in the scientific literature. When the film was playing in theaters, much criticism was directed at politicians concerning the Kyoto Protocol and climate change. The film's scientific adviser was Dr. Michael Molitor, a leading climate change consultant who worked as a negotiator on the Kyoto Protocol.^[3][4]

Global warming causes large areas of the Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves to break off and melt, diluting the Atlantic Ocean with large amounts of fresh water. This disrupts the ocean's thermohaline circulation and slows the Gulf Stream, causing a rapid cooling of the northern hemisphere. This triggers a series of anomalies and extreme weather events, eventually leading up to a massive "global superstorm" system consisting of three gigantic hurricane-like superstorms, which result in an ice age for the northern hemisphere within days. One hurricane-like storm is over Canada, one over Scotland, and a third over Siberia. The movie follows Jack, a paleoclimatologist for NOAA; his son Sam, a high school student; and his wife Lucy, a doctor.

The film portrays the eye of the superstorms as having such a low pressure that extremely cold air (−150 °F) from the upper troposphere is sucked downward, instantly freezing all who are caught in the eye. A woman in NOAA argues that the freezing air would warm up and rise, such as in regular storms, but Jack states that the air is dropping too fast. The storm is headed to New York City, where Sam is trapped, and which Jack is trying to reach with Arctic gear and his survival skills.

Throughout the movie, a subplot involves the refusal of the Vice President of the United States to accept the threat of global warming—despite increasingly extreme weather conditions occurring throughout the world—insisting that measures to prevent it will do too much damage to the economy.

The story follows Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), a paleoclimatologist. The movie opens with Jack in Antarctica with two colleagues, Frank and Jason, drilling for ice core samples on the Larsen Ice Shelf for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The ice shelf cracks and breaks off from the rest of the continent, nearly killing Jack, who made a daring jump over the frozen rift to retrieve precious ice core samples. The concentration of greenhouse gases contained in the cores is used in a presentation he makes to a United Nations conference held in New Delhi, India on global warming. The idea, however, resonates with Dr. Terry Rapson of the Hedland Climate Research Center in Scotland.

Shortly after Dr. Rapson arrives back in Scotland from the conference, two buoys in the North Atlantic simultaneously show a massive drop in water temperature. Rapson concludes that the melting of the polar ice has begun to disrupt the North Atlantic current and calls Jack to see if his paleoclimatological weather model could be used to predict what, and when it will occur. Jack is surprised at what Dr. Rapson is saying because he predicted that the events would not happen in his lifetime, but rather in a hundred or a thousand years from then. At that moment, Dr. Rapson is watching a news report, the reporter saying that several RAF helicopters initiating a search and rescue mission over England. The movies switches to the helicopters and radio chatter saying things as "We've lost visual contact." Soon after that, a huge ice hurricane strikes, freezes the choppers fuel and hydraulic lines, therefore bringing the choppers down and actually freezing the crew to death in a few seconds

Across the world, violent weather causes mass destruction and chaos. In Japan, massive hailstones devastate the crowded streets in the Chiyoda District of Tokyo. In Los Angeles, tremendous tornadoes level all buildings in their paths.

Meanwhile, Jack's son, Sam Hall, is traveling to New York City for an academic competition, with his friends Brian and Laura. The weather in Manhattan becomes increasingly turbulent with strong winds and torrential rains. Large flocks of birds begin flying south while animals at the Central Park Zoo become violently erratic. Their taxi is stuck in a traffic jam, so they walk the rest of the way to the competition on foot.

After the competition, Sam and his friends are stuck in New York, as the flight they were supposed to leave on, was grounded due to the monstrous tornadoes in LA. Sam calls his father, promising Jack that he'll be on the next train to Washington, where they live. Sam and his friends, meanwhile, will stay with a new friend they had met, JD, and take a tour of New York, including visiting the Natural History Museum. The group take shelter in JD's apartment for the night while the storm worsens. JD decides to give them a ride to Philadelphia, where they can continue to Washington by other means.

JD's driver is stuck in traffic a ways from the apartment, so they decide to walk there, deciding that it'll be faster to get out of town that way. As they exit, the street is seen in ankle deep blue-black water. Laura makes the suggestion to stay put, but Sam insists that they get home, quickly to avoid the awful weather. Meanwhile, sewers are backing up, and the water is starting to rise, and bubble right out of manholes on the streets.

As the four walk to JD's car, water continues to rise at an incredible rate. No more than an hour or two later, the water becomes waist deep, and still growing. At this point, the power is out in a large fraction of the city and all traffic is at a dead stand-still. Laura comments that they won't be able to drive anywhere in the chaos, and proposes to go back to the apartment. Sam, assessing the situation, states that they need to move to higher ground, and they decide to go to the Public Library, as its steps are still out of the water.

Suddenly a news report comes in saying in a muffled voice, shrouded in static, "There's a huge wall of water coming right at me! Everybody, take-" it is cut off by severe static. The people listening to the report stare at the radio in sheer disbelief. Then an enormous wave is shown ramming into the Statue of Liberty, causing waves to splash hundreds of feet into the air. It slams the coast of Manhattan spreading out into all the streets, and moving inland at high speeds. Meanwhile, an African-French tourist is trapped with her child in a car, by the rapidly growing wall of water. Laura, being fluent in French, speaks to the trapped woman and tells her to shield herself. A cop smashes the car's windshield and the woman escapes the car with her child unharmed. After, Laura turns around and continues her walk with Sam towards the library. Suddenly, she cuts a deep gash in her leg on the car's sharp bumper, and bleeds in the waist deep water. Sam turns around, and makes an advance towards her, when he catches sight of something large hurdling down the opposite street. He realizes what it is, and rushes to help his bleeding friend. The wave rips through the street, lifting cars and people into the air, and throwing them with unbelievable force. Many are killed, and Sam and his friends barely get into the library in time to escape the monstrous wave.

In Scotland, the situation is increasingly worsening, and Rapson and his coworkers are trapped in their research lab. When asked to evacuate: Jack (over the phone): it's time you got out of there, professor." Rapson: "I'm afraid that time has come and gone, my friend." Jack: "What can we do?" Rapson: "Save as many as you can." (Static gets louder, phone disconnects). Later, Rapson's generator runs out of fuel, and his coworker takes out a bottle of scotch, proposing to run the generator for a little longer with the alcohol. Instead, Rapson, Simon, and Dennis pour themselves a drink and make one last toast to "England", "mankind", and "Manchester United", respectively, as the generator fails and the three are left in solemn darkness.

The remainder of the story concerns itself with the proof of Hall's theory and the beginning of a new Ice Age, one that is short but still very devastating to the planet, resulting in millions of deaths. Survivors are forced to flee to the Southern and Southwestern United States and Mexico, where strained relations between the two nations lead to refugee problems.

Dr. Hall decides to make the dangerous journey to Manhattan to find his son, Sam, who becomes stranded when one of the Arctic storms settles over that area, trapped in the New York Public Library with a great number of other survivors. Before he leaves, he briefs the president and they decide to evacuate all the southern states. He also says grimly that it is already too late for the northern US. When he leaves in his pickup truck, accompanied by his coworkers Frank and Jason, snow is shown completely covering the streets of Washington, in massive blankets. Meanwhile, Sam and his companions speak with the rest of the survivors in the library, and even make jokes despite the worsening situation. Along the route, Dr. Hall hears a radio message warning all people in the northern states that going outside can be deadly, and to burn everything they can to stay warm, and that all highways are closed due to dangerous driving conditions. Jack's truck then gets stuck in a snowbank, just north of Philadelphia, prompting him and his coworkers to undertake the rest of the journey to New York on foot. Jack and his assistants must endure the deadly storm, without any shelter save for a small tent. Midway through their trek, Frank falls through the ground, and his friends quickly realize that they are walking on the glass roof of an abandoned shopping mall. Jason tries to pull him up, but their combined weight threatens to kill them both, so Frank cuts the rope, and falls to his death, to save Jason.

Jack's wife, a doctor, is forced to stay behind in Washington because her patient can only be transported by an ambulance. A call is put to the county ambulance service, and one comes just in time to save her and the patient from the storm. They go south to Mexico. The president also decided to evacuate at the last minute, but he was less fortunate- his car is caught in the storm and he is killed.

Inside the library, Sam Hall and the other survivors use advice Sam got from his father to outlast the cold, they burn countless books, in an attempt to keep warm. Then, a loud ship horn is heard. They wonder where it is coming from, and who could be sailing a ship in the middle of the cataclysm. They discover that an abandoned cargo ship has drifted inland, carried by the deep water on the streets, and it sails through the streets silently. At one point, Sam and his two friends, Brian and J.D., are forced to leave the library and enter the ship when a companion, Laura, starts to suffer from blood poisoning because of the cut she suffered when she was attempting to escape the tsunami earlier. They figure it is the perfect time, because the weather seems relatively calm, compared to earlier "instant-freezing" temperatures at least. Onboard, they narrowly avoid being killed by wolves that escaped from the New York Zoo, and manage to reach the library safely with the medicine found on the ship. Soon, the "instant-freezing" air from the upper troposphere makes landfall. The Empire State Building is shown with a layer of ice spreading, starting at the upper tip, and descending downward toward the cold, abandoned streets. Meanwhile, everyone crowds into the inner areas of the library trying to escape the instant-freeze that slowly creeps into the building from the streets. They quickly throw many books into the fire, in an attempt to stop the ice's advance toward them. It stops, just 20 feet from the refugees. Jack and Jason manage to survive by taking shelter in a restaurant, and turning on the gas stove for heat.

At the end of the movie, Jack manages to find the library and signal for help. By then, the storms were already dissipating. Jack, Sam, and everyone inside the library are rescued in a helicopter. As they leave, they see other people leaving buildings, indicating that there were other survivors of the storm. The new president (formerly vice president) gives a televised speech, saying in a moral tone that for many years the world had ignored nature's destructive force, and that they "operated under the belief that [they] can continue to consume the world's resources without consequence." He admitted his fault, then went on to his gratitude over Mexico assisting Americans in a time of need, and that there was cause for hope when Jack found his son alive in New York. He then tells the news crew that he has received a radio signal of a small band of survivors in New York City. He immediately sends a search and rescue mission involving chinooks, and black hawk helicopters. They soon pick up the survivors, along with hundreds of other survivors on high building rooftops. The movie ends by showing the Earth from the International Space Station, the storms gone, and the astronauts commenting that the skies above the planet look clearer than they have ever been.

The film has been strongly criticized by scientists for its premise being physically impossible and "absurd".^[5] There is little meteorological or climatological science in the actual events of the movie. Critics of the science shown in the film have asserted that global warming is unlikely to bring about a sudden onslaught of natural disasters, but is rather a gradual trend in the average climate. A fair amount of evidence has accumulated recently that suggests the climate does occasionally undergo abrupt shifts in climate, with ice ages taking as little as ten years to start. The 2007 IPCC Report ^[6] states that disruption of the Meridonial overturning circulation is 90-95% likely within the next hundred years. This most likely will not bring on a new ice age, instead only worsening winters for the North. In any event, such an abrupt climate change would look nothing like what the movie portrays. For more information on abrupt climate change, see The Science of Abrupt Climate Change [12].

In the film, the disasters are entertainingly sudden and cataclysmic. Criticisms of the science portrayed in the movie include: Movie Physics: The Day After Tomorrow[13] and The Day After Tomorrow™: Could It Really Happen? [14].

• While the initial idea that an increase in freshwater could slow or shutdown thermoelastic circulation in the northern Atlantic ocean is scientifically valid and has a certain amount of probability to develop, it is impossible for the change to occur as rapidly as shown in the movie. They would need to pump about the amount of fresh water in the Greenland ice sheet for this to happen.
• The plot-feasibility condition that descending tropospheric air would be cold, because it was descending too fast to warm up, is physically impossible. Bringing air downward means the air must be compressed from a very low pressure to a much higher pressure. By the ideal gas law, the temperature of the air must increase. Furthermore, the potential temperature of tropospheric air is higher, not lower, than the temperature of surface air. If brought to the surface, it would have a higher temperature than the surface air. (A simple back of the envelope calculation can confirm this, using −50 °C (−58 °F) for the temperature of the tropopause and generously estimating it at a lower, wintertime level, of 300 mb. Using the potential temperature formula, we see compressing it to an average surface pressure of 1000 mb would give it a temperature of about 30 °C/86 °F.) ^[7],^[8]

• The freezing temperature for the kerosene fuel used in most commercial and military jet engines, such as the RAF helicopters, is between -40 to -52.6 °F ( -40 to -47 °C) and not at the −150 °F (−101 °C) Prof. Rapson informs Jack is the freezing temperature ("We had to look it up!" Rapson tells Jack). Yet jet engines are routinely flown at 30,000 ft (9144m), the upper part of the troposphere whence the supercold air is supposed to be descending across the northern hemisphere.^[9]
• The temperature required in the scene where helicopters froze solid in mid air would be far too low for snow to occur. Below about −40 °C (−40 °F) the moisture capacity of air is so low that snow is very unlikely. The temperature in this scene would need to be much colder than −40 °C.^[10]
• In order for the sea ice to reach the level it does on the Statue of Liberty (approximately 215 ft or 65.6 m), 75% of Antarctica's ice would have to melt, which would take more than 2.5 years - only if all the solar radiation received by the Earth were concentrated on Antarctica (which could not happen due to the axis of the Earth). Also, the height of the water is hugely different throughout the film, managing to rise up to 10 stories on buildings in some shots and in others only being not much more than five feet (being you could see street lights and stop lights at times). ^[11]

The movie generated mixed reviews from both the science and entertainment communities.

• The online entertainment guide Rotten Tomatoes has rated the movie at 46%, with an average rating of 5.3/10.^[12]
• Environmental activist and Guardian columnist George Monbiot called The Day After Tomorrow "a great movie and lousy science." ^[13]
• In a USA Today editorial by Patrick J. Michaels, a Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, Michaels called the movie "propaganda", noting, "As a scientist, I bristle when lies dressed up as 'science' are used to influence political discourse."^[14]

• It was first released on DVD in the USA on October 12, 2004 in both widescreen and fullscreen versions.

• A 2-disc "collector's edition" containing production featurettes, two documentaries: a "behind-the-scenes" and another called "The Forces of Destiny", as well as storyboards and concept sketches were also included. It was released on May 24, 2005.

• It was released in high-definition video exclusively on Blu-ray Disc in the USA on October 2, 2007 in full 1080p with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio track.

• One deleted scene included two surfers in Kona, Hawaii, who are killed by a canoe rigging thrown at their SUV by Typhoon Noelani.
• Another deleted scene revealed that the Japanese man killed in the hailstorm was talking on a cell phone to the rude businessman (the same one who later dies on the bus when the giant wave hits New York City) about a failing insider trading scheme. Instead, in the final cut of the film, he is shown talking to his wife.
• Another deleted scene showed Sam, Laura and Brian at Jack's house, preparing for the decathlon a few days before they depart to New York. Sam's bitterness towards his father is clearly shown when he is seen deliberately over watering one of his plants.
• Another deleted scene shows Jason and Jack recovering from the snow storm in the kitchen of the Burger King. They eat and talk about what would happen after the storm.

• Fifty Degrees Below, a Kim Stanley Robinson novel in which greenhouse warming similarly disrupts the Gulf Stream; the rate of cooling is somewhat less exaggerated.
• Superstorm, a 2007 miniseries.

• Official Site
• The Day After Tomorrow at the Internet Movie Database
• The Day After Tomorrow at Rotten Tomatoes
• USA today review
• CoolJunkie review
• Bad Physics Review
• Yahoo! Movies: The Day After Tomorrow (2004) - Movie Info
• Scientific explanations of movie scenes on cisci.net