(Bloomberg) — When Hurricane Harvey dropped 60 inches of rain on Houston in August, some described the storm as "biblical." One of America's leading hurricane scientists has now sharpened that assessment.
|Houston rainfall
"By the standards of the average climate during 1981-2000," MIT's Kerry Emanuel writes in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "Harvey's rainfall in Houston was 'biblical' in the sense that it likely occurred around once since the Old Testament was written."
Emanuel's analysis attempts to answer a series of questions critical to recovery and rebuilding in Houston and elsewhere: "Should buildings, homes, roads, and associated infrastructure be built in the same place again?" he wrote. Are building codes, levees and sea walls tough enough for the future? As the world warms, every community will have to grapple with these questions on their own.
|Hotter seas, more humid air
Climate scientists continue to project that as the century goes on, hotter seas and more humid air are likely to make tropical storms more intense. The first volume of the latest U.S. National Climate Assessment, released by the Trump administration earlier this month, reports scientists having higher confidence in their finding that storms will carry more precipitation.
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