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            <h1 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Global Warming Really Did Make Hurricane Harvey More Likely</h1>
            
            <p class="dek" itemprop="description">Texas is now six times more likely to see huge, cyclone-related floods than it was in the 1990s.</p>
            
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                        <span class="caption">A NOAA satellite captures Hurricane Harvey spinning in the Gulf of Mexico in the days before it made landfall.</span>
                    
                    
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        <section id="article-section-1"><p>Think of the Earth’s climate system as a pair of dice. You never know exactly how a roll will end. But some outcomes, like <a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Dice.html" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'0',r'545765'">rolling a seven</a>, are much more likely than others, like snake eyes. But when we warm the globe, we essentially load the dice to favor extreme outcomes, including some of the most unpleasant weather possible in the United States.</p><p>A new study, rapidly conducted in September and <a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1716222114" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'1',r'545765'">published Monday in the </a><em><a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1716222114" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'2',r'545765'">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>,</em> finds that the dice are increasingly likely to roll some very unpleasant weather indeed. Global warming may not have caused Hurricane Harvey, which ravaged Houston over the course of a week earlier this year, but it made it much more likely.</p><p>The study argues that storms that dump more than 20 inches of rain on Texas are about six times more likely now than they were at the end of the 20th century. Hurricane Harvey dropped 20 inches of rain across a swath of the state, and it deluged some parts of Houston <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/29/harvey-marks-the-most-extreme-rain-event-in-u-s-history/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'3',r'545765'">with a record-smashing 60 inches of rain</a>.</p></section><div class="ad-boxinjector-wrapper"><gpt-ad id="boxinjector1" targeting-pos="boxinjector1" class="ad ad-boxinjector" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="1" data-object-name="boxinjector"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [320, 350], [300, 350], [1, 3], [320, 520], [320, 430], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[760, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1050, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1024, 350], [1, 3], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-2"><p>Harvey-like hurricanes will only get more likely as the century wears on. Between 1981 and 2000, there was about a one-in-100 chance that a hurricane would dump 20 inches of rain on Texas. By the end of this century—from 2081 to 2100, as children today enter old age—there will be a roughly one-in-5.5 chance that such a flooding hurricane would form if global warming continues apace.</p><p>“When you’re planning for the future of cities like Houston, it would be unwise to assume that the climate of the future is pretty much similar to what it’s been for the last 100 years or so,” said Kerry Emanuel, the author of the paper and a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Even if the climate wasn’t changing, records of rainfall are too short, and the quality of them is too low, to really get a handle on flooding risks.”</p><aside class="pullquote instapaper_ignore">“The main reason our technique shows increasing rainfall is that there’s more water in the air.”</aside><p>Global warming will worsen hurricanes for two reasons. First, otherwise identical storms of all types—not just hurricanes—will retain more moisture in a warmer climate. “It’s one of the risks that we’re most confident of,” he told me. “The physics are so elegantly simple: Warm the air and it can hold more water.”</p><p>Second, global warming will make storms move slower. What made Hurricane Harvey so damaging was not its intensity but its longevity: The cyclone moved ashore, parked over Houston, and then rotated in place for three days. It became an atmospheric conveyor belt, picking up water from the Gulf of Mexico and raining it out over the Houston metropolitan area. These days of rain caused the city’s devastating inland floods.</p></section><div class="ad-boxright-wrapper" data-pos="boxright"><gpt-ad id="boxright1" targeting-pos="boxright1" class="ad ad-boxright" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="3" data-object-name="boxright"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [300, 600]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-3"><p>In Emanuel’s study, global warming helped slow similar hurricanes down. Though tropical cyclones unleash some of the fiercest winds on Earth at their center, their movement across the surface of the planet—and thus their storm track—is determined by <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/meteorologists-forecast-hurricanes/538995/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'4',r'545765'">the slower high-altitude winds summoned by distant high- and low-pressure systems</a>. This planetary engine is slowing down as global warming pushes land and ocean temperatures closer together.</p><p>“If [general circulation] slows down, then places near the coast will get more rain,” Emanuel said. “But the main reason our technique shows increasing rainfall is that there’s more water in the air.”</p><p>Emanuel conducted the study through the use of a computational tool he pioneered: embedding a hurricane and ocean model in a coarse, planetary-scale climate model. To determine the current climate’s propensity for a Harvey-like storm, he used three meteorological models (with the embedded hurricane tool) to simulate thousands of years of late-20th-century weather. Then, he used six different global climate models (each with the same hurricane tool) to simulate thousands more years of late-21st-century weather. By examining the models’ output of rainfall data and storm tracks, he could arrive at more accurate probability risks.</p><aside class="pullquote instapaper_ignore">“When you are looking at extremes, it’s good to look at all rain-producing events.”</aside><p>“This analysis provides strong evidence for why climate-change information should be incorporated into any plans for building Houston back stronger,” said <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/what-we-do/people/heidi_cullen" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'5',r'545765'">Heidi Cullen</a>, the chief scientist and director of the World Weather Attribution program at Climate Central, a nonprofit based in Princeton, New Jersey, in an email.</p><p>She said the study was a “very nicely constructed analysis” that “makes it clear that we must act quickly to both adapt to the changes that are already in the pipeline while also reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.”</p></section><div class="ad-boxinjector-wrapper"><gpt-ad id="boxinjector2" targeting-pos="boxinjector2" class="ad ad-boxinjector" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="1" data-object-name="boxinjector"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [320, 350], [300, 350], [1, 3], [320, 520], [320, 430], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[760, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1050, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1024, 350], [1, 3], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-4"><p>But it did not fully capture the future risk of flooding rains in the Houston area or Texas, she added. “About one-third of extreme precipitation events on the Gulf Coast are <em>not</em> associated with a hurricane,” she told me, citing a forthcoming Climate Central analysis of Hurricane Harvey. “When you are looking at extremes, it’s good to look at all rain-producing events.”</p><aside class="callout" data-omni-click="r'article',r' ',d,r'related',#data-omni-index,@data-article-id"><hr><h4>
        
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    </ul><hr></aside><p>While this paper was prepared for publication quickly—Emanuel said he rushed it toward completion so it could inform Houston’s rebuilding efforts—it uses some of the most cutting-edge techniques in climate science. Embedding a cyclone model inside a climate model helped a team of researchers conclude last month that New York City <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/climate-change-nyc-floods/543708/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'6',r'545765'">will soon see major, hurricane-induced flooding every five years.</a></p><p>And Emanuel’s scholarship helped inform<a href="https://science2017.globalchange.gov/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'7',r'545765'"> the Climate Science Special Report</a>, released this month by 13 U.S. federal agencies, which predicted that global warming will increase the strength and destructiveness of hurricanes by the end of 21st century.</p><p>The paper also examined how likely it is that a Harvey-like storm would hit the Houston metro area specifically. While major flooding cyclones will be once-in-100-year events by the end of this century, they were as rare as once-in-2,000-year events at the end of the last. “By the standards of the average climate during 1981–2000,” the paper says, “Harvey’s rainfall in Houston was ‘biblical’ in the sense that it likely occurred around once since the Old Testament was written.”</p></section>
    
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<p>J.G. started drinking at 15, when he and a friend experimented in his parents’ liquor cabinet. He favored gin and whiskey but drank whatever he thought his parents would miss the least. He discovered beer, too, and loved the earthy, bitter taste on his tongue when he took his first cold sip.</p>

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<p>It’s a far cry from the vision that fills the Sidewalk Toronto <a href="https://sidewalktoronto.ca/">webpage</a>, where a crisp video shot on a sunny day makes the Victory silos look cheerful and full of potential. Torontonians in puffer vests and toques describe a vibrant city bursting at the seams. Toronto’s population <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/Page.cfm?Lang=E&amp;Geo1=CSD&amp;Code1=3520005&amp;Geo2=PR&amp;Code2=35&amp;Data=Count&amp;SearchText=Prince&amp;SearchType=Begins&amp;SearchPR=01&amp;B1=All">grew</a> by 4.5 percent between 2011 and 2016. The city tolerates a <a href="https://www.lowestrates.ca/blog/finance/how-much-it-costs-live-young-person-toronto-2018">high cost of living</a> and a <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/11/28/rental-vacancy-rates-lowest-in-16-years.html">low rental-vacancy rate</a>.</p>


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<p>“There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations,” Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, said during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual worldwide-threats hearing on Tuesday.</p>

<p>“We have seen Russian activity and intentions to have an impact on the next election cycle,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said later. Other top intelligence officials, including the FBI Director Chris Wray, agreed.</p>


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                <figcaption class="credit">© Tobias Friedrich / UPY2018</figcaption>
                
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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Winners of the 2018 Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest</h3>
    </a>
    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/alan-taylor/" itemprop="url" title="Alan Taylor" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Alan Taylor</span></a></span></li>
        

    </ul>
    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-13T12:58:58" />
    <meta itemprop="dateModified" content="2018-02-14T01:34:04" />

    <div itemprop="description" class="article-content ">
        <p class="dek">The organizers of the Underwater Photographer of the Year have just announced the winning photographers and images for 2018.</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p>Organizers of the <a href="http://www.underwaterphotographeroftheyear.com/">Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest</a> have just announced the winning photographers and images for 2018, with German photographer Tobias Friedrich being named Underwater Photographer of the Year 2018. More than 5,000 images were submitted this year by photographers from around the world. Prizes and commendations were handed out in a number of categories including Wide Angle, Macro, Wrecks, Behavior, Portrait, Black &amp; White, Compact, Up &amp; Coming, and, in British waters, Wide Angle, Compact, and Macro shots. UPY was once again kind enough to share some of this year's honorees with us below, with captions written by the photographers.</p>

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                <figcaption class="credit">Eric Thayer / Reuters</figcaption>
                
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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The Great Senate Immigration Debate That Wasn't</h3>
    </a>
    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/russell-berman/" itemprop="url" title="Russell Berman" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Russell Berman</span></a></span></li>
        

    </ul>
    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-13T17:30:11" />
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    <div itemprop="description" class="article-content ">
        <p class="dek">Mitch McConnell promised an open, freewheeling process to finally resolve the fate of DACA and the Dreamers. But amid more partisan bickering, the attempt has stalled before it even began.</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p>This was supposed to be the week when the Senate strutted its stuff, when the vaunted committee of 100 held an open, freewheeling debate to resolve—for now—the weighty issue of immigration and the fate of 700,000 young undocumented immigrants whose protection from deportation could soon expire. There would be no precooked deals foisted upon senators by their leadership, no pointless political grandstanding.</p>

<p>Under an agreement reached between Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/democrats-relent-government-shutdown-over/551144/">that ended last month’s government shutdown</a>—not to be confused with <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/the-us-government-may-shut-down-and-reopen-while-you-sleep/552893/">this month’s</a>—the Senate would spend a week debating immigration, border security, and the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Trump plans to end on March 5. Senators would consider amendments from all sides, vote them up or down, and hopefully arrive at a consensus that could muster 60 votes and move on to the House.</p>


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                <figcaption class="credit">lillisphotography / Getty / Emily Jan / The Atlantic</figcaption>
                
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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Stop Saying 'Smart Cities'</h3>
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    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/bruce-sterling-1/" itemprop="url" title="Bruce Sterling" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Bruce Sterling</span></a></span></li>
        

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    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-12T15:39:12" />
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        <p class="dek">Digital stardust won’t magically make future cities more affordable or resilient.</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p>The term “smart city” is interesting yet not important, because nobody defines it. “Smart” is a snazzy political label used by a modern alliance of leftist urbanites and tech industrialists. To deem yourself “smart” is to make the <span class="smallcaps">NIMBY</span>ites and market-force people look stupid.</p>

<p>Smart-city devotees all over this world will agree that London is particularly smart. Why? London is a huge, ungainly beast whose cartwheeling urban life is in cranky, irrational disarray. London is a god-awful urban mess, but London does have some of the best international smart-city conferences.</p>

<p>London also has a large urban-management bureaucracy who emit the proper smart-city buzzwords and have even invented some themselves.  The language of Smart City is always Global Business English, no matter what town you're in.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Syria's War Is Fueling Three More Conflicts</h3>
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        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/krishnadev-calamur/" itemprop="url" title="Krishnadev Calamur" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Krishnadev Calamur</span></a></span></li>
        

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    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-13T16:09:18" />
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    <div itemprop="description" class="article-content ">
        <p class="dek">The grim post-ISIS future</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p>When an Israeli jet crashed after being shot down over Syria over the weekend, it marked a serious escalation in the Syrian Civil War. But it also reflected an ongoing reality, one that is growing more dangerous: Syria’s war encompasses at least three other international conflicts, each of which are heating up.</p>

<p>In the last few weeks alone, Turkey has clashed with Syrian Kurds and threatened a U.S.-controlled town in Syria; an Israeli fighter jet that was part of a response to an incursion into Israeli territory by an Iranian drone launched from Syria <a href="https://www.idf.il/en/minisites/israeli-air-force/air-force-strikes-iranian-targets-in-syria/">took Syrian anti-aircraft fire</a>, forcing its two pilots to eject and parachute into Israeli territory; and U.S. forces repelled an attack by Russian fighters, killing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html?action=click&amp;contentCollection=Middle%20East&amp;module=Trending&amp;version=Full&amp;region=Marginalia&amp;pgtype=article">an unknown number of them</a> that <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-13/u-s-strikes-said-to-kill-scores-of-russian-fighters-in-syria">reports</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html">suggest</a> could be in the hundreds.   </p>


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                <figcaption class="credit">Toru Hanai / Reuters</figcaption>
                
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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">A Better Way to Look at Most Every Political Issue</h3>
    </a>
    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/conor-friedersdorf/" itemprop="url" title="Conor Friedersdorf" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Conor Friedersdorf</span></a></span></li>
        

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    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-11T08:00:00" />
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    <div itemprop="description" class="article-content ">
        <p class="dek">Americans would be less alienated from one another and solve problems more easily if they recognized one little-noticed distinction in policy debates.</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p>We sometimes think of political issues in binary terms. Is someone pro-life or pro-choice? But most individuals hold views that are more complicated than a binary can capture.</p>

<p>An alternative is to describe a given position on a spectrum. On abortion, an outright ban sits at one extreme; at the other is the elimination of all restrictions on the procedure. In between are a staggering array of coherently distinguishable positions.</p>

<p>Politicians seeking to win votes express their stances either in terms of a binary or as a spot on a spectrum, depending on where they see the greatest advantage. Though their beliefs don’t change, how they frame them makes a political difference.</p>

<p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p>

<p>There’s a different set of frames, though, that are as relevant as binaries and spectrums, though they are less familiar and less discussed: equilibriums and limits.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Big-City Life on Very Little Water</h3>
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        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/olga-khazan/" itemprop="url" title="Olga Khazan" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Olga Khazan</span></a></span></li>
        

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    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-13T10:38:28" />
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        <p class="dek">In Cape Town, people are restricted to just a fraction of the typical amount of water. From showering in buckets to special pee spray, here’s how they’re coping.</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p>CAPE TOWN, South Africa—I was warned right away, at the airport: “We have a water crisis with severe restrictions in place,” read a Buick-sized sign in the arrivals area.</p>

<p>So it was true. I had spent the past week in South Africa on a reporting trip and had decided to pass through Cape Town on my way back, in part out of curiosity about the water shortage. The news coverage sounded scary: Because of a historic drought, the city was nearly out of water. In June, taps are set to run dry—an event referred to, menacingly, as “Day Zero.” If it comes, people will be forced to queue for a daily ration of water from guarded collection points around the city.</p>

<p>It seemed too nightmarish to be plausible. I spent a few months in Cape Town during the southern hemisphere’s wintertime in 2010. I remembered the place as being both relatively well managed—the country hosted the World Cup while I was there—and, well, pretty rainy.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">'Don't Sneak': A Father's Command to His Gay Son in the 1950s</h3>
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        <p class="dek">In a StoryCorps animation, Patrick Haggerty remembers the remarkable advice he got from his dairy farmer dad.</p>
        
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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Beware the Northside Skull and Bone Gang</h3>
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