Category 4 landfalling hurricane Harvey poured more than a metre of rainfall across the heavily populated Houston area, leading to unprecedented flooding and damage. Although studies have focused on the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to this extreme rainfall event1–3, limited attention has been paid to the potential effects of urbanization on the hydrometeorology associated with hurricane Harvey. Here we find that urbanization exacerbated not only the flood response but also the storm total rainfall. Using the Weather Research and Forecast model—a numerical model for simulating weather and climate at regional scales—and statistical models, we quantify the contribution of urbanization to rainfall and flooding. Overall, we find that the probability of such extreme flood events across the studied basins increased on average by about 21 times in the period 25–30 August 2017 because of urbanization. The effect of urbanization on storm-induced extreme precipitation and flooding should be more explicitly included in global climate models, and this study highlights its importance when assessing the future risk of such extreme events in highly urbanized coastal areas.Modelling the contribution of urbanization to the impacts associated with hurricane Harvey in August 2017 shows that urbanization worsens rainfall and flooding.

中文翻译：

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城市化加剧了休斯敦哈维飓风造成的降雨和洪水

4 级登陆飓风哈维在人口稠密的休斯顿地区带来了超过一米的降雨，导致前所未有的洪水和破坏。尽管研究集中在人为气候变化对这种极端降雨事件 1-3 的贡献上，但人们对城市化对与飓风哈维相关的水文气象的潜在影响的关注有限。在这里，我们发现城市化不仅加剧了洪水响应，还加剧了风暴总降雨量。使用天气研究和预测模型（一种用于模拟区域尺度天气和气候的数值模型）和统计模型，我们量化了城市化对降雨和洪水的贡献。全面的，我们发现，在 2017 年 8 月 25 日至 30 日期间，由于城市化，所研究流域发生此类极端洪水事件的概率平均增加了约 21 倍。城市化对风暴引起的极端降水和洪水的影响应更明确地纳入全球气候模型，本研究在评估高度城市化沿海地区此类极端事件的未来风险时强调了其重要性。 2017 年 8 月与飓风哈维相关的影响表明，城市化加剧了降雨和洪水。