Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them

By combining gripping accounts of sailing voyages through raging storms with fascinating background on how climate scientists are studying extreme weather, Fox (The Last Winter) delivers a report that’s as entertaining as it is informative. He notes that for decades, sailors have been raising the alarm that centuries-old rules of thumb for navigating the sea are losing their predictive value as climate change transforms the ocean. This can lead to dangerous consequences, Fox contends, providing a harrowing description of how in 1991, sailor John Kretschmer endured 80 mile-per-hour winds and torrential rain after getting caught in a category three hurricane despite sailing outside “typical hurricane generation zones” near Bermuda. Fox explains that as CO₂ warms the atmosphere, the heat intensifies the process by which energy is transferred from the ocean to the air, which in turn exacerbates the differences in air pressure that generate wind and make severe storms more common. Exploring scientific efforts to better understand how global warming is changing the ocean, Fox details oceanographer Adrienne Sutton’s work with Richard Jenkins’s Saildrone company to develop unmanned vessels capable of taking CO₂ and temperature measurements even in the middle of a hurricane. Filled with enlightening climate science and exciting adventure writing, this thrills. Agent: Duvall Osteen, UTA. (Sept.)