A suspended federal project that promised to be a game-changer in protecting the public from worsening flooding is back in business today, with a team of scientists hard at work to make up for lost time.
“My team is thrilled that it’s back on track. I and the rest of my team think this is a very important project for the country,” said extreme-rainfall researcher Kenneth Kunkel, lead scientist in building a major part of NOAA Atlas-15, a database that will supply realistic rainfall data to engineers and planners who say they desperately need it.
Kunkel, a research professor at North Carolina State University’s Institute for Climate Studies, said the university was officially notified Tuesday to restart its work, which was halted by a July 10 termination order from the NOAA-funded contractor RTI International, for which the NC State team is a subcontractor.
A related part of the project was halted in April while federal budget-cutters flagged NOAA projects to eliminate.
Atlas-15 advocates feared the database project would be permanently cancelled and they put up a coordinated fight, lobbying federal authorities to preserve it. Monster rainfall events in several states this month – particularly the flash flood in Texas that killed at least 135 people – drove home their point about worsening flood hazards.
Atlas-15 is a next-gen tool for understanding rainfall and flooding risks, now and in the future. Unlike preceding rainfall atlases, the new one will reflect how changes in the earth’s climate have wiped out old weather patterns, changing how communities experience extreme rainfall and making dangerous flooding more common.
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When complete (in phases, mostly this year and next year) Atlas-15 will let engineers and planners know what flood risks they’re up against now and in years to come, empowering them to design safer, more resilient homes, hospitals, highways, water systems and other infrastructure.
Ardent advocates for intensifying the nation’s progress on flood resilience include the national Association of State Floodplain Managers, with more than 7,000 members across the U.S., the American Society of Civil Engineers, with 160,000 members in 177 countries, and local governments grappling with increasingly frequent floods caused by extreme rainfall, sea-level rise, and storm surge. Atlas-15 will be a powerful tool against flooding caused by rainfall.
Nothing like this before
“There are few clearer examples of where climate change is likely to have an adverse impact on our country’s infrastructure and people’s lives than increases in extreme precipitation causing catastrophic flooding,” said Kunkel, who has researched extreme precipitation and changing rainfall patterns for much of his long career. The warming climate increases the moisture content of the atmosphere which causes more intense rainfall, Kunkel explained.
“This opportunity to provide information that government entities and engineers and others can use to build in additional resilience when they’re building new things … is a big deal for our country. We haven’t had anything like this ever here in the U.S.,” he said. “I think it’s extremely important.”
Flood-resistant structures cost more to build but reduce losses due to flood damage, Kunkel said, echoing decades of advice from floodplain managers, civil engineers, urban planners and disaster recovery teams.
As rainfall becomes more extreme, structures and communities built to be more flood-resilient can effectively suffer fewer losses of life and property. Increasingly common flood catastrophes are front of mind for many Americans, after Hurricane Helene dropped torrential rain across the Southeast in November, killing at least 250 people, and after a 26-foot-deep, rainfall-induced flash flood roared down the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country on July 4 and killed at least 135 people in minutes.
Atlas-15 is designed in Volume 1 to reduce those risks by including reliable, updated rainfall data into the design and refurbishing of structures; a second volume will supply predictive data based on foreseeable changes in weather patterns yet to come as documented by climate scientists.
“An interstate highway, you don’t want that to flood. The economic losses of shutting down the local economy is even greater than the cost of repairing the highway,” Kunkel said. “And if you build a hospital, expecting it to be there in 50 years, maybe you take actions now before that flood comes that wouldn’t cost much … like putting the generators on a higher floor.”
Atlas-15 originally was scheduled to release Volume 1 this fall, with Volume 2 rolling out for the contiguous 48 states next year, and the rest due in 2027. Given the various work stoppages, Kunkel anticipates the rollouts will be delayed by at least a few months.
Laura Cassels is a veteran Florida journalist and former Capitol Bureau chief who specializes in science, the environment, and the economy. The Florida Trident is an investigative news outlet focusing on government accountability and transparency across Florida. The Trident was created and first published in 2022 by the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a non-profit organization that facilitates local investigative reporting across the state.