Extreme Weather ...A film we all need to watch to understand the connection to climate change

Hear the rumble of ice blocks shearing off the edge of a glacier. See the destructive power of a tornado’s swirling winds. Watch flames devour a forest as if it were so many matchsticks. Sean Casey explains the journey this film took him on. The new IMAX film is in theaters now. You have to watch it on the big screen to get a better idea of the huge relentless forces nature can unleash when the natural environment and climate of our planet is changed by global warming.

These dramatic scenes are presented in the new IMAX documentary film Extreme Weather, produced by National Geographic and appearing in theaters starting October 15.

More than two years in the making, the film takes viewers from Alaska to California to witness the awesome power of the Earth. It offers a front-row seat on a fast-changing and dangerous world.

Sean Casey is a veteran storm chaser and filmmaker who's also known for his IMAX works Tornado Alley (2011), Forces of Nature (2004), and Alaska: Spirit of the Wild (1997).

What was the idea behind this film?

Our weather is changing because of climate change. We have a warming atmosphere and ocean, and that affects the weather. But rather than just talk about that, we wanted to show powerful imagery that really does justice to what’s happening.

Extreme Weather makes the case that the weather is an interconnected system, where small changes in one place create changes elsewhere. Can you explain how this works?

No one event is isolated from others. For example, when you have melting ice you have rising and warmer oceans, which means hurricanes have the potential to do more harm. Drought is killing a lot of trees—65 million in California alone—and all that dead wood increases chances for fires. In turn, soot from those fires covers ice, which leads to faster melting of snowpacks.

We tried to connect things to show that each event is not insular; it affects other parts of the planet. Normally, the Earth is so large that those kinds of effects are hard for us to see.

What was the experience of making the film like?

A lot of the events we chose to film are fast, fleeting, and dangerous. They are weather-dependent, and so on that timeframe it was almost like a suicide run, but we got through it.

 We decided to do a glacier sequence, using a specially built armored boat to film glaciers calving in a way that hadn’t been done before.

How did that effort to film glaciers pay off?

We took the camera and our crew right into what we called the “kill zone,” where glaciers were calving directly over you. They shot out ice hundreds of yards. I hope viewers will be able to really feel that power, to share in the visual intensity of ice blasting all around you.

But that shoot also had a psychological effect on us. We put ourselves right on the edge. We worked under the shadow of a 300-foot face of ice that at any moment could topple on top of us, for 14 hours a day, in a little armored boat. You don’t know if the next piece of ice will be the size of a baseball or a car. For months afterward I would wake up in a sweat, look out the window, and see the face of the glacier.

Were there other dangerous or poignant moments that stick out from the filming?

I’ve been chasing tornadoes for 16 years, so I understand what tornadoes can do and what I shouldn’t do. But when we immersed ourselves in filming calving glaciers and wildfires it was a steep learning curve.

We got run over twice by a wildfire, into a zone that is called the ember wash. You just have to sit tight as a massive fire rages all around you. You're being sandblasted by a storm of burning embers and smoke. The radiant heat is unbelievable. I hadn’t been in that situation before, and I felt some panic. Firefighters are the real and absolute heroes in those situations.

Did you use other technology?

We also used drones, which can give a perspective that is incredible. We tried some technology that didn’t work. We made something we called the “black ball of death,” a crashcam that we wanted to tow in front of a glacier, and have the ice calve on top of it. But we couldn’t get it to work.

What was it like documenting the work of scientists studying glaciers, storms, and so on?

We were following people who are passionate about what they do, and that’s infectious. They want to better understand how things work, to better protect people and all forms of life. It was really great to document that.


The film shows us exactly what is happening on earth and how scientists brave real dangers to learn and understand.