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The Coming Global Superstorm ( ISBN 0-671-04190-8) is a 1999 book by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, which warns that global warming might produce sudden and catastrophic climate change.
First, the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic drift would generate a cordon of warm water around the North Pole, which in turn holds in a frozen mass of Arctic air. Second, if the North Atlantic drift were to shut down, that barrier would fail, releasing a flood of frozen air into the Northern Hemisphere, causing a sudden and drastic temperature shift.
The book discusses a possible cause of the failure of the Gulf Stream: the melting of the polar ice caps could drastically affect the ocean salinity of the North Atlantic drift by dumping a large quantity of freshwater into the world's oceans.
Bell and Strieber contend that such destabilizations have occurred before, and cite seemingly impossible engineering feats by ancient civilizations which must have been catastrophically destroyed since they do not appear in the historical record. Among their examples are the archaeological ruins of Nan Madol, which the book claims were built with exacting tolerances and extremely heavy basalt materials, necessitating a high degree of technical competency. Since no such society exists in the modern record, or even in legend, the society must have been destroyed by dramatic means.
While other explanations besides a global meteorological event are possible, a correlating evidence set is presented in the woolly mammoth. Strieber and Bell assert that since mammoths have been found preserved with food still in their mouths and undigested in their stomachs, these animals must have been killed quickly, in otherwise normal conditions. They were preserved so well by quick freezing, which is taken as evidence of a rapid onset of a global blizzard or similar event.
Interspersed with the analytical parts of the book are a series of interlinked short fictional scenarios, written in italics, describing what might transpire today if a destabilization of the North Atlantic Current were to occur. The fictional accounts of "current events" as the meteorological situation deteriorates provided background for, and is the source material of, the 2004 science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow . Indeed, some events from the book are portrayed in the film with little modification, such as the failure of the Gulf Stream which freezes over large portions of the northern hemisphere including New York City. [1]
Jet streams are fast flowing, narrow, meandering air currents in the atmospheres of the Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. On Earth, the main jet streams are located near the altitude of the tropopause and are westerly winds. Jet streams may start, stop, split into two or more parts, combine into one stream, or flow in various directions including opposite to the direction of the remainder of the jet.
The North Atlantic Current (NAC), also known as North Atlantic Drift and North Atlantic Sea Movement, is a powerful warm western boundary current within the Atlantic Ocean that extends the Gulf Stream northeastward.
Winter is the coldest season of the year in polar and temperate climates. It occurs after autumn and before spring. The tilt of Earth's axis causes seasons; winter occurs when a hemisphere is oriented away from the Sun. Different cultures define different dates as the start of winter, and some use a definition based on weather.
Louis Whitley Strieber is an American writer best known for his horror novels The Wolfen and The Hunger and for Communion, a non-fiction account of his alleged experiences with non-human entities. He has maintained a dual career of author of fiction and advocate of paranormal concepts through his best-selling non-fiction books, his Unknown Country web site, and his podcast, Dreamland.
The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a weather phenomenon over the North Atlantic Ocean of fluctuations in the difference of atmospheric pressure at sea level (SLP) between the Icelandic Low and the Azores High. Through fluctuations in the strength of the Icelandic Low and the Azores High, it controls the strength and direction of westerly winds and location of storm tracks across the North Atlantic.
Physical oceanography is the study of physical conditions and physical processes within the ocean, especially the motions and physical properties of ocean waters.
Thermohaline circulation (THC) is a part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes. The adjective thermohaline derives from thermo- referring to temperature and -haline referring to salt content, factors which together determine the density of sea water. Wind-driven surface currents travel polewards from the equatorial Atlantic Ocean, cooling en route, and eventually sinking at high latitudes. This dense water then flows into the ocean basins. While the bulk of it upwells in the Southern Ocean, the oldest waters upwell in the North Pacific. Extensive mixing therefore takes place between the ocean basins, reducing differences between them and making the Earth's oceans a global system. The water in these circuits transport both energy and mass around the globe. As such, the state of the circulation has a large impact on the climate of the Earth.
The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 American science fiction disaster film directed, co-written, and co-produced by Roland Emmerich and starring Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sela Ward, Emmy Rossum, and Ian Holm. Based on the 1999 book The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, the film depicts catastrophic climatic effects following the disruption of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation, in which a series of extreme weather events usher in climate change and lead to a new ice age.
The trade winds or easterlies are the permanent east-to-west prevailing winds that flow in the Earth's equatorial region. The trade winds blow mainly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere, strengthening during the winter and when the Arctic oscillation is in its warm phase. Trade winds have been used by captains of sailing ships to cross the world's oceans for centuries. They enabled colonial expansion into the Americas, and trade routes to become established across the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.
The westerlies, anti-trades, or prevailing westerlies, are prevailing winds from the west toward the east in the middle latitudes between 30 and 60 degrees latitude. They originate from the high-pressure areas in the horse latitudes and trend towards the poles and steer extratropical cyclones in this general manner. Tropical cyclones which cross the subtropical ridge axis into the westerlies recurve due to the increased westerly flow. The winds are predominantly from the southwest in the Northern Hemisphere and from the northwest in the Southern Hemisphere.
Iceberg B-15 was the largest recorded iceberg by area. It measured around 295 by 37 kilometres, with a surface area of 11,000 square kilometres, about the size of the island of Jamaica. Calved from the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica in March 2000, Iceberg B-15 broke up into smaller icebergs, the largest of which was named Iceberg B-15-A. In 2003, B-15A drifted away from Ross Island into the Ross Sea and headed north, eventually breaking up into several smaller icebergs in October 2005. In 2018, a large piece of the original iceberg was steadily moving northward, located between the Falkland Islands and South Georgia Island. As of December 2022, the U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC) still lists one extant piece of B-15 that meets the minimum threshold for tracking. This iceberg, B-15ab, measures 20 km × 7 km ; it is currently grounded off the coast of Antarctica in the western sector of the Amery region.
A circumpolar vortex, or simply polar vortex, is a large region of cold, rotating air; polar vortices encircle both of Earth's polar regions. Polar vortices also exist on other rotating, low-obliquity planetary bodies. The term polar vortex can be used to describe two distinct phenomena; the stratospheric polar vortex, and the tropospheric polar vortex. The stratospheric and tropospheric polar vortices both rotate in the direction of the Earth's spin, but they are distinct phenomena that have different sizes, structures, seasonal cycles, and impacts on weather.
The cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis is a pseudo-scientific claim that there have been recent, geologically rapid shifts in the axis of rotation of Earth, causing calamities such as floods and tectonic events or relatively rapid climate changes.
The Bølling–Allerød interstadial, also called the Late Glacial Interstadial, was an abrupt warm and moist interstadial period that occurred during the final stages of the Last Glacial Period. This warm period ran from 14,690 to 12,890 years before the present (BP). It began with the end of the cold period known as the Oldest Dryas, and ended abruptly with the onset of the Younger Dryas, a cold period that reduced temperatures back to near-glacial levels within a decade.
An Atlantic hurricane is a type of tropical cyclone that forms in the Atlantic Ocean primarily between June and November. The terms "hurricane," "typhoon," and "cyclone" can be used interchangeably to describe this weather phenomenon. These storms are rotating, organized systems of clouds and thunderstorms that originate over tropical or subtropical waters and have closed low-level circulation. In the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, and eastern North Pacific, the term "hurricane" is mainly used, whereas "typhoon" is more commonly used for storms originating in the Pacific Northwest. The term "cyclone" is used in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.
The Antarctic bottom water (AABW) is a type of water mass in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica with temperatures ranging from −0.8 to 2 °C (35 °F) and absolute salinities from 34.6 to 35.0 g/kg. As the densest water mass of the oceans, AABW is found to occupy the depth range below 4000 m of all ocean basins that have a connection to the Southern Ocean at that level.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is part of a global thermohaline circulation in the oceans and is the zonally integrated component of surface and deep currents in the Atlantic Ocean. It is characterized by a northward flow of warm, salty water in the upper layers of the Atlantic, and a southward flow of colder, deep waters. These "limbs" are linked by regions of overturning in the Nordic and Labrador Seas and the Southern Ocean, although the extent of overturning in the Labrador Sea is disputed. The AMOC is an important component of the Earth's climate system, and is a result of both atmospheric and thermohaline drivers.
Explosive cyclogenesis is the rapid deepening of an extratropical cyclonic low-pressure area. The change in pressure needed to classify something as explosive cyclogenesis is latitude dependent. For example, at 60° latitude, explosive cyclogenesis occurs if the central pressure decreases by 24 millibars (0.71 inHg) or more in 24 hours. This is a predominantly maritime, winter event, but also occurs in continental settings. This process is the extratropical equivalent of the tropical rapid deepening. Although their cyclogenesis is entirely different from that of tropical cyclones, bomb cyclones can produce winds of 74 to 95 mph, the same order as the first categories of the Saffir–Simpson scale, and yield heavy precipitation. Even though only a minority of bomb cyclones become this strong, some weaker ones can also cause significant damage.
The Gulf Stream, together with its northern extension the North Atlantic Drift, is a warm and swift Atlantic ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and flows through the Straits of Florida and up the eastern coastline of the United States, then veers east near 36°N latitude and moves toward Northwest Europe as the North Atlantic Current. The process of western intensification causes the Gulf Stream to be a northward-accelerating current off the east coast of North America. Around 40°0′N30°0′W, it splits in two, with the northern stream, the North Atlantic Drift, crossing to Northern Europe and the southern stream, the Canary Current, recirculating off West Africa.
Most of Sweden has a temperate climate, despite its northern latitude, with largely four distinct seasons and mild temperatures throughout the year. The winter in the far south is usually weak and is manifested only through some shorter periods with snow and sub-zero temperatures, autumn may well turn into spring there, without a distinct period of winter. The northern parts of the country have a subarctic climate while the central parts have a humid continental climate. The coastal south can be defined as having either a humid continental climate using the 0 °C isotherm, or an oceanic climate using the –3 °C isotherm.
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