Storm World, by Chris Mooney is an account of the development of the science of Hurricanes and their links to Global warming, against the background of Katrina and the politics of global warming.

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The Hurricane season is a well-established part of the media background in the US, as the South-East coast braces itself for the annual onslaught. Predicting the season has been a meteorological speciality; much of the most successful work has been based on statistical techniques, spotting patterns and cycles in the data of past hurricanes. This technique is inherently antagonistic to the concept of climate change, though: if the climate changes, so will the patterns and statistics.

So how does global warming affect Hurricanes? Hurricanes depend on a number of features: warm oceans (over 26 degrees) from which they derive their energy; a lack of vertical wind shear, differences in winds at different heights which can disrupt the structure of a hurricane, amongst others. Global warming will lead to warmer Oceans, and hence probably more intense storms, but not necessarily more storms overall: hurricanes leave a cold wake behind them and an intense storm may inhibit storms developing along its track. Vecchi and Soden predict that increased wind shear may increase and help decrease the number of hurricanes. But hurricanes and cyclones may occur in new places as they warm up, as witnessed by Catarina, the so-far anomalous hurricane that hit Brazil in 2006.

One interesting point that is now coming to light it the idea that hurricanes may act as a 'thermostat' relieving some effects of global warming. The Greenhouse effect does not heat the atmosphere evenly: while the oceans and troposphere are warmer, the stratosphere is cooled. Hurricanes pump a lot of heat from the Ocean to the base of the stratosphere, and may help to regulate the heat of the tropics. A view of hurricanes and major storms as an important part of the climate, rather than passing weather, is developing.

Chris Mooney has really done his work, and shows a sympathetic balanced picture of the key meteorologists involved. He shows science at work against a ferocious political and media background, where hurricane science as well as hurricanes makes the daily news cycle. In this background less scrupulous journalists play up the personal rivalries of the meteorologists and scientists: easier to get across than the nuances of the scientific debate. But this focus on personality makes it hard for the scientists to be objective: scientific tradition emphasis-es a non-personal framing of debate and language precisely to allow participants to back down on previous stances in the face of new evidence.