An Unlikely Insurgency (2019)

Fuming over sea level rise the President threatens the CalSea satellite mission that California funded after cuts to NASA. Thousand die from a botched forecast of a New Orleans hurricane, the result of an apparent sudden drop in ocean heat content. Professor Connie Jensen from Seattle suspects sabotage of sea level data caused the error. To deflect blame for fatalities, the President threatens scientists. In response the West Coast states and British Columbia threaten secession to create the new country of Pacifica. Despite her close call with prison in the 1970s, Connie reluctantly joins daughter Leigh, a network security engineer, the lead scientist and engineer from CalSea, and biologist Olivia in the Insurgency, a secret group of scientist activists. They pinpoint the source of the sabotage and implicate oil companies. Using Leigh's cyber skills they design a fix that requires data encryption. Connie and her student Abdullah must carry the decryption codes to Vancouver as another hurricane heads to Miami. Political intrigue and strong female leads in a fictional story that incorporates the real science of sea level rise, global warming and strengthening hurricanes.