In Antarctica, a group of scientists are drilling the ice to get core samples. As the drill goes
down, the ice starts to crack under their camp and soon the drill starts to sink. Jason almost
falls into the hole too, but Jack and Frank catch him just in time. Then Jack risks jumping over the
crack to retrieve the samples, and when he jumps back, the ice breaks under his feet and he falls.
Thankfully he manages to use an axe to hold on and his friends bring him back up to watch how the
entire ice shelf is breaking. Sometime later, Jack attends the UN Conference on Global Warming in New
Delhi to tell all the world leaders that the Earth will go through a new ice age, which will freeze
everything on the planet. When the politicians ask how much time is left, Jack explains that it may
take some centuries, but if they don’t stop using fossil fuels soon, their grandchildren will face
the consequences. Unfortunately the politicians point out this would cost lots of money and call
Jack’s speech “sensationalist claims”. Outside the building, people are protesting against climate
change and a reporter comments on the snow, which never happened in this area before and is sending
the city into chaos. After the conference, Jack meets Terry, who works for the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration. Terry agrees with Jack’s points and they leave together to share
theories. A few days later at Terry’s monitoring station in Scotland, an employee notices that a
buoy is showing a huge temperature drop, but his coworker just thinks a strong wave must’ve knocked
it about. When Terry comes back, they don’t tell him about it. In Japan, it seems to be a normal
rainy day when suddenly, huge hail stones start falling from the sky, destroying vehicles and
buildings and even killing a few people. In the USA, reports about hurricane Noelani have taken
weather experts by surprise. This is the strongest hurricane ever recorded and is killing hundreds of
people. At the international space station, the astronauts are shocked to notice unusual gigantic
storms forming in the Earth’s sky. Meanwhile Jack’s son Sam is flying to New York with his
friend Brian and his crush Laura. Sam is afraid of flying and he only gets even more nervous when
the plane enters the huge storm, which causes it to shake. Suddenly the pilot announces they’ll
go through some turbulence, so everyone fastens their seatbelts and holds tight as the shaking
gets worse and bags begin falling all over the corridor. Thankfully it doesn’t last long and
Sam realizes he’s holding Laura’s hand, so he has to let go. When they make it to New York,
they’re surprised to see a large group of birds flying west, almost as if they were escaping from
something. In fact, animals in farms and zoos are also behaving strangely, as if they were afraid.
Sam and his friends go to the competition and do quite well, but Sam can’t help noticing that a boy
from another school called JD keeps on flirting with Laura. Later in the monitoring station, Terry
finally notices the buoy registering the drop in ocean temperature. The employee tells him what he
saw the other day, but they soon discover multiple buoys are sending the same report, meaning it’s
not a malfunction. Terry decides to call Jack and tell him his theory is occurring at a great speed,
which hasn’t happened since the last ice age ten thousand years ago. The only forecast model
capable of plotting this scenario is Jack’s. While newscasts inform that hurricane Noelani is getting
worse and the coast guard closed the beaches, a technician in a weather monitoring center
in California is getting busy with his girlfriend instead of working. She suddenly hears a noise and
gets scared, but it turns out to be the janitor. At that moment the phone rings and the technician
gets a distress call from a reporter in LA, who reveals that it’s raining hailstones the size
of golf balls. The technician checks the TV and learns that a tornado is starting to form in LA,
so he calls his boss to warn him. The man goes outside and discovers the tornado is bigger than
average. Back to Jack, he and his coworkers watch the reports of the news helicopters,
which are filming how several tornados are forming very quickly around LA and destroying everything
in their path. People panic and try to get away, but even large vehicles are blown away and soon
buildings start to crumble too. The weather monitoring center is also hit and barely gets to
stand on the ruins afterward. Soon the president orders the suspension of all air traffic,
but two planes don’t get back in time and crash in the Midwest. An emergency meeting is conducted at
the Office of Global Change in Washington DC, and they share reports of strange and violent
weather from all over the world. Thanks to Terry’s confirmation, Jack can explain that
this is happening because of the North Atlantic currents, which are affected by the polar ice
that is melting due to global warming. He also mentions that it just started and it’ll only
get worse soon. However a climate shift is still a theory, so Jack’s boss gives him 48 hours to find
proof to send to the government. With the help of Frank, Jason, and NASA’s meteorologist Janet,
Jack begins working hard on writing a good report to the point that he doesn’t sleep for 24 hours.
When he finally takes a break, his team manages to finish some calculations and they discover
there are only six to eight weeks before a new ice age hits the Earth. The next day, Jack gets
a call from Sam, who explains he’s stuck in New York because the not-stopping rain is flooding
the city and has caused many closures. After he hangs up, he discovers that JD is offering his
group to stay in his fancy apartment. While the bad weather still hasn’t reached DC, people are
already panicking and raiding the supermarkets. Jack gets to meet with the vice-president and
tells him the situation is critical so they should start evacuating, but the vice-president ignores
him. Meanwhile in Northern Europe, it has been snowing at a crazy speed for the last 24 hours
with no sign of stopping. A search-and-rescue team is sent to retrieve the Royal Family, but
the helicopters have zero visibility and end up flying in the eye of the storm. Soon the choppers’
instruments and blades start freezing, causing them to fall and crash. Only one pilot manages
to survive, but as soon as he peeks outside, he is frozen to death. Terry hears of this incident
and sends confidential data to Jack because he has a more powerful computer to analyze it;
this is how they discover a hurricane forming over land, which isn’t supposed to happen. In New York,
it’s already been raining for three days and all trains have been suspended, and the water is now
pouring out of street manholes. In Canada, the ocean rose by 25 feet in seconds and has caused
terrible storms too, in fact there are reports of a tropical hurricane. Sam and his friends see
these reports on TV right before the power goes out, and JD announces he wants to go pick up his
brother so he offers to give the group a ride too. When they leave the building, they see that the
city is in absolute chaos and the flood is rising. To make matters worse, employees in the local zoo
discover the wolves have escaped. Many people are rushing to hide in the national library, although
a homeless man isn’t allowed inside because of his dog. Vehicles can’t move anymore because
of the water, and many people get stuck inside their cars. Sam’s group begins running toward the
library too, but Laura stays back to help a family in a car, getting her leg injured in the process.
Suddenly a huge tsunami appears out of nowhere and hits the Statue of Liberty before slowly engulfing
the city, killing thousands of people. Sam runs back to the street to grab Laura and bring her
into the library right before the wave covers the area and gets inside the library’s first
floor as well. Moments later, Jack finishes his calculations and calls Terry to inform him that
the air is descending too rapidly, creating storms in Canada, Scotland, and Siberia that are getting
bigger and will reach other areas soon. Their estimation of six weeks had been wrong, it’ll
only take 48 hours for the new Ice Age to start. There’s nothing they can do to stop it, they can
only try to save lives. At that moment Jack gets an alert of what’s happening in New York and
rushes to meet with his wife Lucy. In New York, all the survivors including the dog are trying to
get comfortable in the library. Nobody has service on their phones, so Sam looks for a payphone. He
ends up descending into a flooded floor to find it and immediately calls his parents to tell them
he’s fine. Jack informs him of what’s actually going on, asking his son to stay inside because
the storm will get worse and everyone outside will freeze to death. The water on this floor
gets higher by the second and the flood reaches the ceiling, ending the call. For a second Laura
thinks Sam has drowned but fortunately he manages to swim out. Then Laura searches for dry clothes
for Sam and hugs him to share her body heat. Moments later, everyone starts hearing a strange
noise and when they look outside, they’re shocked to see a cargo ship sailing through the flooded
streets, crushing the vehicles under it. Meanwhile Jack decides he’ll go to New York to save his son
regardless of the danger. His boss knows he can’t stop him, but first he asks him to try with the
government again because this time they have a meeting with the president himself. During
the meeting, Jack makes an impressive presentation and suggests that people in the north should go as
south as possible, perhaps even to Mexico. The vice-president again disapproves of everything
Jack says, but this time he’s quickly scolded by the president’s team for not having paid
attention to this when he should have. To make the plan easier, Jack writes a line on the USA
map of all the people that can still be evacuated and explains that sadly it’s too late for those
far away because anyone entering that area will freeze. After Jack leaves, the vice-president
tries to protest against evacuation again, but the president ignores him and approves Jack’s plan.
Back in Terry’s station, the building loses power and the team decides to drink because they don’t
think they’ll be rescued. In New York, the library is out of power too. The homeless man notices the
flood has frozen and people are using the chance to walk on the ice to head south, so the survivors
in the library start getting ready to do the same. Sam tries to stop them by informing them of what
Jack said, but most people ignore him and they leave anyway. Only a small group stays behind,
and because the temperature is falling so fast, they have no choice but to start burning books
to warm the place up. They also break the vending machines to get access to some food and use the
carpets as blankets. Outside the city, people are suffering from the cold and regret having left the
library, some of them are starting to die as well. In the meantime, Mexico closes its borders because
it can’t handle any more American refugees. All the roads are stuck in a traffic jam,
so the people start crossing the river to reach Mexico as illegal immigrants. A few hours later,
the traffic finally starts moving again because the American president has reached a deal:
he'll forgive all Latin American debt in exchange for opening the borders. In a hospital in DC,
Lucy is reading to one of her patients when she gets some bad news: people panicked and escaped,
so there are no ambulances left. A coworker says there’s a policeman with a snowplow that can help,
but the patient can’t be moved in anything but an ambulance. Lucy tells her coworker to leave
while she stays with the child to wait for proper help. Back to Jack, he’s surprised to get help
from Frank and Jason to go rescue Sam. Using the science equipment made for Antarctica, they cross
the frozen lands in their truck, but eventually the vehicle hits a roadblock. Now they have no
choice but to continue on foot using the snowshoes and staying connected with a rope. They manage to
walk consistently for a few hours, but they don’t know what they’re stepping on because of the snow,
and at one point they walk on top of a building. The glass breaks and Frank immediately falls in,
dragging the others down with him. Jack manages to stop the fall with his axe again, but the
glass under him is starting to crack as well. First Frank cuts the end of the rope to release
their main supplies bag, but this isn’t enough, so Frank cuts his rope as well. His friends yell
for him as Frank falls to his death. Afterward, Jack and Jason put up a tent to spend the night.
In the hospital, an ambulance finally arrives to pick up Lucy and the patient. At the White House,
the president is also evacuated, but moments later, the vice-president receives news that
the president got caught in the storm and didn’t make it. In the international space station,
the astronauts see how a huge cloud is covering the planet and take some images to send to Janet.
As soon as she sees them, she predicts that the Canadian storm will hit New York in an hour. At
the library, Laura can’t sleep so Sam chats to her, finally admitting his feelings. Laura
responds by kissing him. In the morning, the group discovers that Laura has fallen
unconscious because of a fever. They look up the symptoms in a medicine book and check her leg,
realizing that the cut from the other day has given her blood poisoning. The book says she
needs penicillin immediately or she’ll lose the leg, so Sam decides to go into the cargo ship to
search for medicine, and Brian and JD volunteer to help. The trio reaches the ship quickly,
unaware that their scent is being picked up by the wolves that escaped from the zoo. The door
to the infirmary is locked, so Sam goes out a corridor window and carefully climbs around the
wall. He breaks the infirmary window and comes inside, where he opens the door to his friends
and Brian finds the penicillin. Sam wants to go back immediately, but Brian and JD point out
they should get food as well. While they’re in the kitchen, the trio is suddenly found by the wolves,
who start chasing them through the ship. A wolf manages to bite Jason’s leg, so Sam hits it on the
head until it lets go of his friend and they close the door behind them. At that moment, the eye of
the storm finally covers New York. Sam notices this and makes a plan: he’ll lure the wolves out
of the room so his friends can lock the door. Then Sam crosses the wall outside to re-use the window,
but he accidentally steps on broken glass and gets the wolves’ attention sooner than planned.
He quickly begins running and after a few turns, he manages to lure them into a corridor and lock
the door. The wolves go to the other end of the corridor to try to reach the kitchen, but Brian
and JD have already locked that door too and now they’re collecting supplies. They put all the
stuff and a wounded JD on a boat and drag it out of the ship at the same time that the buildings
around them start freezing and falling. Brian and Sam have to pick JD up and run into the library,
where they enter the warm room right before the rest of the building freezes. The group
immediately works on making the fire stronger. On the frozen landscape, Jack and Jason keep moving,
but eventually Jason collapses due to exhaustion and Jack has to drag him through the snow. When
he discovers the eye of the storm, he immediately begins digging in the snow and finds an open vent
through which he throws Jason and himself right before this area freezes too. A few hours later,
Jason wakes up to find the tent up and a few fires going on. As soon as Jack sees him he
wants to keep going, not hearing Jason’s idea to wait because Jack thinks Sam may not survive for
long. As Jack and Jason walk through the storm, they keep encountering frozen bodies everywhere.
They only stop to sleep in the tent during the night, and Jack comments that humanity survived an
ice age but if they aren’t more careful from now on, they won’t survive this one. Sometime later,
the international space station notices that the storm is dissipating in Europe and they finally
get to see land again. At the same time, Jack gets out of the tent and sees that the skies have
cleared. It’s easier for him and Jason to walk now and they soon reach New York, finding the Statue
of Liberty completely frozen and a bunch of ships stuck in the ice. When the GPS indicates they’re
standing on top of the library, Jack is devastated to realize his son may’ve been buried by the snow.
Refusing to give up, the duo manages to find an opening in the snow and enter the building
through a window. As they look around, they start to lose hope, but eventually they see light under
a door and open it to find the group alive and well, even Laura is feeling better. Sam and Jack
quickly reunite with a warm hug. Sometime later in Mexico, the vice-president has taken over as
the new president and after hearing about the survivors in the library, he announces on TV
that he was wrong and that he will be initiating a major rescue operation to retrieve people stuck in
the northern states. Soon the helicopters reach New York and take the group away, including the
dog. They also found many survivors in the other buildings. In the international space station,
the astronauts watch the Earth and notice that it is the clearest air they’ve ever seen.