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NOV. 30 marks the end of the North Atlantic hurricane season each year, and 2005 was expected to be no different. But that was the year of Katrina, a year that broke all the rules. There were more nameable storms (28, of which a record 15 became hurricanes); a record four Category 5 hurricanes (those with winds in excess of 155 miles per hour); and the most powerful Atlantic hurricane (Wilma) ever recorded -- and of course there was Katrina, the most expensive natural disaster in American history.
While officials at the National Hurricane Center in Miami were delivering their end-of-season remarks on Nov. 29 that year, the forecasters behind them were still hard at work. There were so many storms that meteorologists had run out of proper names for them and had begun using Greek letters instead. Hurricane Epsilon was just getting started, and Tropical Storm Zeta would eventually push the 2005 season clear into 2006. That epic year of record-breaking storms and overworked scientists lays the foundation for Chris Mooney's "Storm World." But it's the future of hurricanes, not the past, that gives the book its ominous tone. 2005 was also the year that many scientists started taking seriously the proposition that global warming could make hurricanes far worse than they are today - - more powerful, longer lasting and perhaps more frequent -- and that the 2005 season was just a taste of things to come.
The connection between hurricane strength and global warming is a real, although still hypothetical, possibility. Given that Mooney is a journalist (Washington correspondent for the science magazine Seed), readers might expect him to hype the hypothesis and zero in on worst-case scenarios as he explores hurricane science. The title of his previous book, "The Republican War...