CO2 buildup in earth's atmosphere reaches a tipping point. Global weather destabilizes, turns chaotic. Ice storms, dust storms, floods, blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes pummel the earth nonstop. A secret computer model reveals that the frantic weather will peak out, and radically transform world climate into an alien environment devastating to human survival. Scientists Ben Mason and Claudine Manet, developers of the computer model, are lovers as well as lab partners. While they work frantically to head off the approaching catastrophe, a disgraced Russian general hacks into their model and sees earth's bleak future as his opportunity for ultimate world power. Ben, who had left the CIA to develop the computer model at the national lab, is reactivated by the Agency and sent on a perilous mission to block the rogue general's plot. Claudine, not realizing that Ben is on a secret mission, misunderstands his absence, putting their relationship on thin ice. Claudine is placed in charge of a massive NASA project that, if completed on time, could stop the approaching doomsday climate change. But her project is stalled by bureaucracy. And Ben, his cover blown, is on the run in hostile territory. The climate change calamity steadily approaches, threatening to turn the planet into a simmering wasteland.