When typhoon Haiyan pummelled the Philippines earlier this month with winds of more than 300 kilometres per hour, it was the most intense storm to hit land in modern history. But to truly understand how unusual a storm such as Haiyan is, scientists have to turn to the geological record. That is why Davin Wallace, who studies the traces of ancient storms at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, is angling to go to the Philippines in the next few weeks. He hopes to calculate how often large storms strike the Philippines by comparing coarsegrained sand deposited by Haiyan with similar layers found in metres-deep sediment cores that chart thousands of years of history. Right now, food, shelter and sanitation are the top priorities in the Philippines, where nearly 5,000 people have died and more than 4 million have been displaced as a result of Haiyan. But in a brief window of time - after the immediate humanitarian relief effort but before long-term rebuilding - scientists have a unique laboratory in which to gather data in fields as diverse as climatology, civil engineering and social science. Researchers who study natural disasters know that their work hinges on the misfortune of others, but they hope that the research can make future catastrophes less deadly.
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