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We're getting extreme weather, but Hollywood got there first

Jim Beckerman

Feel, some days, like you're living through a Hollywood disaster movie? 

This week, for instance?

A month-long, multi-state outbreak of "extreme weather" climaxed in New Jersey as a tornado — yes, it was a tornado — touched down in Stanhope, Sussex County. As of 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, there was a tornado watch in 10 New Jersey counties.

New York floods, and freezes, in the 2004 climate change disaster film "The Day After Tomorrow"

 "It's been confirmed that yesterday was a tornado, but they don't know the length or strength," said N.J. state climatologist David Robinson at Rutgers. "Probably an EF0 or EF1."

Perhaps you're wondering if this is normal. Perhaps you're wondering if it has something to do with climate change. Perhaps you're wondering, with everything that's gone on in the past 20 years — Hurricanes inundating New Orleans, Superstorms battering New York, wildfires burning through California, tidal waves swamping Indonesia — if this is just a gigantic Roland Emmerich movie in which we've all been cast as the luckless extras.

"The Day After Tomorrow"

Life, when it comes to the weather, is sure imitating art. Consider the following epic weather disasters. Which is true, which is fiction?

(1) A whopping 300-plus tornadoes sweep across the country. in a single month — including states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which almost never get them.

(2) A record-breaking "F-6" tornado sweeps through Texas.

(3) Manhattan is flooded by a "superstorm";  The Statue of Liberty is submerged up to her chest.

(4) Manhattan is flooded by a "superstorm"; New York's subways fill with water.

No. 4 — subways filled with water — really happened, of course. Superstorm Sandy, 2012. The similar-sounding No. 3 — Statue of Liberty underwater — is from "The Day After Tomorrow," the quintessential 2004 climate-change-disaster flick, directed by Emmerich. 

Michael Shannon in  "Take Shelter."

No. 2, the F-6 tornado, is from Bruce Sterling's 1994 novel "Heavy Weather."  But is it any more improbable than No 1 — the uncanny onslaught of 300 or more tornadoes, this month, that has cut a path of destruction through more than 11 states (seven deaths have been recorded so far)?

Many people say they can't ever remember weather like this. But of course, they can. They remember it from the movies. 

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"The Day After Tomorrow," "Geostorm," "The Wave," "Into the Storm," "Take Shelter," "Atomic Twister," "Interstellar," the miniseries "The Fire Next Time," the 2008 remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still," are just some of the films and shows that have either — depending on your point of view — tried to warn us about climate change, or exploited our fear of it.


And that's just the tip of the melting iceberg.

Films like the "Ice Age" children's series, the ridiculous "Sharknado" franchise, all those "post-apocalyptic" sci-fi films on a ruined Earth, have given the lie to the old adage that everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

What they do is make movies.

"This genre of disaster movie takes a premise that's realistic," said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University in New York. "Hurricanes, floods, really exist. Hollywood just raises the voltage."

Disaster movies, and real disasters

But not by that much. What gives movies like "The Day After Tomorrow" their special charge is the knowledge that they're based on something real.

Climate change is an actual, alarming thing, nearly all scientists agree. The earth's temperature has gone up 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1850, coinciding roughly with the Industrial Revolution. Habitats have changed, species have been decimated, weather patterns have likely been affected, because of it.

"With the change of climate, the atmosphere is warmer, the oceans are warmer, there's more moisture in the atmosphere,"  Robinson said. "There's more energy out there. So when a trigger comes along, we can get more severe storms, more extreme prolonged heat waves. When a hurricane comes along, it might be a wetter, stronger storm than before. The weather is a bit fortified."

The question is whether "climate disaster" films sensationalize the subject, distort the science, exaggerate the effects. 

Seeing New Orleans underwater, or California burning, you may wonder if they've exaggerated much.

"To me, good science-fiction is grounded in some generally acceptable science, and then you put in on super-steroids," Robinson said.

So are events like this month's tornado outbreak evidence that a Hollywood apocalypse is near? And are all these weather events, of the last few years, evidence of climate change?

Yes and no, says Kenneth Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers.

Weather, to be clear, is not the same as climate. There are always variables in the weather: an unexpected cold snap in May, an unusually warm day in January. Such things, by themselves, neither prove or disprove global warming.

And there have always been extreme weather disasters. Between 6,000 and 12,000 people were killed in the Galveston flood of 1900. More than 600 people were killed in the Tri-State Tornado of 1925. More than 600 were killed in the great New England Hurricane of 1937. 

Any individual disaster is probably not, by itself, an indication of climate change. But the evidence becomes more telling when you look at frequency, and severity.

"Answer this question: would Barry Bonds have hit as many home runs if he had not taken steroids?" Miller says. "He would have hit many of the same home runs. But fewer."

Likewise, we would have probably gotten some of the same storms without the exacerbating effects of climate change. But likely fewer. More than 300 tornadoes a month is something for climatologists to study. And Hollywood to put in development.

"I suspect that's starting to step outside normal variability," Miller said.

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