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Buddah
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I just watched a day after tomorrow for the first time today, am I really hit me. Can A ice age occur overnight?
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That depends on what you mean by "overnight". To a climatologist or geologist, the answer is "yes". They just have a different concept of what overnight means than do the rest of us. To a geologist, "overnight" means hundreds of thousands of years. Thousands of years is not just overnight to a geologist, it is a blink of the eye. Climatologists have learned that the climate can sometimes switch modes "overnight" -- where overnight means several years to a century or more.Buddah said:Can A ice age occur overnight?
cmb said:The other inference of your question, a point I found cringeworthy in the film, is the idea that just because the air temperature is at -150 so everything instantly freezes up. Nice for the story line I suppose, but I guess the script writers hadn't considered the thermal inertia of air (very low) versus a lump of helicopter (very high). I guess it would begin to struggle, but I doubt if a helicopter that flew straight into a -150 air mass would not have time to land safely.
D H said:As for the movie you watched: It's just a study in how badly the media can mangle science.
Here's what really happens when air from the upper atmosphere for various reasons plunges toward the surface:"But wouldn't the air warm as it descends?"
"No, it's moving too fast!"
A National Temperature Record at Loma, MontanaWichita, Kansas experienced a "heat burst" last night. Their temperature spiked from around 80 to 100 near midnight, then dropped back down. Their humidity went from around 55% to 7%, then back up, all in less than two hours.
Downbursts such as these (heat burst, Witchita; Chinook wind, Loma) don't always make the local temperature hotter. If the incoming air is cold enough aloft it can still be colder than the air it replaces when it hits the ground. Sometimes the Santa Anna winds make LA get hot and dry, sometimes cool and dry. However, you'll never see air moving so fast that it forgets the laws of physics.On January 14th-15th, 1972, a National Weather Service cooperative observer site located in Loma, Montana recorded a 103F temperature rise (-54F to 49F) within twenty-four hours, thereby breaking the previous national record of 100F fall set on January 23-24th, 1916 in Browning, Montana.
AlephZero said:A small amount of icing on the rotor blades would be enough to cause big problems by screwing up the aerodynamics of the blades. That could well happen in a timescale of minutes.
cmb said:In parts of Russia, the ambient can drop below -70C. At that temperature, your breath freezes instantly and falls to the ground as ice, you can hear it crackling as it freeezes and drops out of the air.
Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd have frozen to death.
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/events/life-80.htmAndre said:Right thou must be joking. I have seen the thermometer at -63C in Resolute Bay in Canada February 1989 and not a trace of such an event.
No, an ice age cannot occur overnight. The process of entering into an ice age takes thousands of years and is caused by gradual changes in the Earth's orbit and tilt.
No, the movie "Day after tomorrow" is not scientifically accurate. While it is true that climate change can cause extreme weather events, the events depicted in the movie happen too quickly and in an unrealistic manner.
No, a sudden global warming cannot trigger an ice age. The Earth's climate is a complex system and while global warming can lead to changes in temperature and sea levels, it does not cause an ice age.
The duration of an ice age can vary, but on average it takes several thousand years for the Earth to warm up and exit an ice age.
No, we are not currently in an ice age. The Earth is currently in a period of interglacial, meaning the Earth is in a warmer phase between ice ages.