To appropriately size infrastructure, stormwater managers use estimates of precipitation amount over a range of durations and recurrence intervals (e.g., 100-year 24-hour storms). These estimates are created for every location in the United States by NOAA in their Atlas-14 publication. While Atlas-14 is an important guidance document, a limitation is that it does not account for climate change, even though some of its estimates include data from the late 1800's. Recent federal infrastructure spending has dedicated funding for updating Atlas-14, but the process could take years and the demand for estimates that incorporate climate change is already high.

To address this gap, we created a proof-of-concept application of NOAA's Atlas-14 methods to dynamically down-scaled climate change projections. This work documented the challenges of combining those methods and created tools and techniques that can be applied to future iterations of climate change projections. Below are links to download the project report, county-specific summaries, and grid data for advanced users.

Project lead and contact: Ryan Noe