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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Risk of ‘thousand-year’ rains could double for US states

Climate warming is raising the risk of rainfall intense enough to strain dams and other infrastructure.
A man walks through knee-high flood waters in a Texas neighbourhood affected by Hurricane Harvey

The catastrophic rains unleashed by Hurricane Harvey on Texas (pictured) in 2017 have been linked to climate change, which will raise the likelihood of similar events occurring across much of the United States. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty

Rare spells of extreme rainfall that would overwhelm today’s flood-defence infrastructure look set to become markedly more frequent in the United States as the climate changes.

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Nature 568, 278 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01130-9

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