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A28 SCIENCE
Friday 16 November 2018

Houston skyscrapers may have worsened Hurricane Harvey rain

By SETH BORENSTEIN but that's different from the
AP Science Writer storm's forward movement
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hu- slowing.
mans helped make recent The other study in Nature
devastating U.S. hurricanes looked at a variety of histor-
wetter but in different ways, ical damaging storms and
two new studies find. tried to calculate past and
Hurricane Harvey snagged future effects of climate
on the skyscrapers of Hous- change. In three cases,
ton, causing it to slow and the scientists simulated the
dump more rain than it storms without the changes
normally would, one study in the climate from green-
found. The city's massive house gases, showing that
amounts of paving had global warming increased
an even bigger impact by rainfall 8.9 percent in Hurri-
reducing drainage. Land cane Maria , 6.3 percent in
development in the met- Hurricane Irma and 8.7 per-
ro area, on average, in- cent in Hurricane Katrina .
creased the chances of ex- Maria hit Puerto and Rico
treme flooding by 21 times, and other parts of the Ca-
study authors said. In this Monday, Aug. 28, 2017 file photo, floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey overflow from ribbean. Irma hit the Ca-
A second study looked at Buffalo Bayou in downtown Houston, Texas. ribbean and Florida, while
last year's major Hurricanes Associated Press Katrina struck New Orleans
Maria and Irma and 2005's and the Gulf Coast.
deadly Katrina and used civil and environmental en- low water to sink into the and stall and climate In Maria's case, a warm-
computer simulations to gineering professor at the ground, Vecchi said. change which brought ing climate concentrated
see what would have hap- University of Iowa. Harvey's record rainfall more water into the storm, heavier rain in the center
pened if there had been Co-author Gabe Vecchi, reached 5 feet in one spot Vecchi said. of the storm and reduced
no human-caused global a climate scientist at Princ- near Houston. The scientists MIT hurricane and climate it on the edges, said co-
warming. The study found eton University, said that used computer simulations expert Kerry Emanuel, who author Michael Wehner,
that climate change sig- forced the storm to move to see the effects of urban- wasn't part of the study, a climate scientist at the
nificantly increased rainfall up higher, causing more ization. In parts of the Hous- called the Harvey study "a Lawrence Berkeley Nation-
from those three storms, concentrated rain over ton metro area, the effects real advance in our under- al Laboratory.
but did not boost their wind Houston and slowing, which of development ranged standing of hurricane im- For 15 storms, which in-
speed. also made more rain. from a 10 percent higher pacts on urban areas." cluded the devastating
Both studies are in Wednes- He compared it to a river risk of extreme flooding in But Texas state climatolo- Typhoon Haiyan , the po-
day's journal Nature . running over rocks, creat- the less developed north- gist John Nielsen-Gammon tent Gilbert and 1992's
Houston was a literal drag ing bubbles. west to nearly 92 times the wasn't convinced. He Hurricane Andrew , the
on Harvey as it sloshed "That's sort of what's going risk in the northeast, they said the team used ge- scientists projected future
through, with the storm on here," he said. reported. neric shapes instead of warming and found future
getting tripped up by the This effect is dwarfed, That's on top of the unique the actual Houston skyline. versions of the same storms
skyscrapers, said study co- though, by the paving weather patterns that He said the storm's wind would be significantly wet-
author Gabriele Villarini, a and building that don't al- made Harvey slow down speeds may have slowed, ter and stronger.q

Skulls reveal Neanderthals,

humans had similarly harsh lives

By MALCOLM RITTER full of snow and ice. on skull injuries. They re-
AP Science Writer While it's true that their lives viewed prior studies of fos-
NEW YORK (AP) — Life as were probably riskier than sils from western Eurasia
a Neanderthal was no pic- those of people in today's that ranged from about
nic, but a new analysis says industrial societies, the vast- 80,000 to 20,000 years old.
it was no more dangerous ly different living conditions In all they assessed data on
than what our own species of those two groups mean 295 skull samples from 114
This illustration provided by Gleiver Prieto and Katerina Harvati faced in ancient times. comparing them isn't really individual Neanderthals,
shows a group of Neanderthals hunting with non-projectile
weapons. That challenges what the appropriate, said Katerina and 541 skull samples from
Associated Press authors call the prevailing Harvati of the University of 90 individuals of our own
view of our evolutionary Tuebingen in Germany. species, Homo sapiens.
cousins, that they lived risky, A better question is whether Injury rates turned out to
stressful lives. Some stud- Neanderthals faced more be about the same in both
ies have suggested they danger than our species species.
had high injury rates, which did when we shared similar That questions the idea
have been blamed on environments and com- that the behavior of Ne-
things like social violence, parable lifestyles of mobile anderthals created par-
attacks by carnivores, a hunter-gatherers, she and ticularly high levels of dan-
hunting style that required study co-authors say in a ger, Marta Mirazon Lahr
getting close to large prey, paper released Wednes- of Cambridge University
and the hazards of exten- day by the journal Nature. wrote in an accompanying
sive travel in environments To study that, they focused commentary.q