A next-gen federal database designed to predict extreme rainfall that leads to dangerous flooding may be safe from federal budget cuts after all, despite being officially halted on July 10.
A key scientist who was working on the NOAA-funded Atlas-15 project to modernize the nation’s rainfall data in two volumes said he was told, to his surprise, to expect to resume his four-person team’s work, though he is waiting for an official green light.
“I received word informally from good sources that funding for volume 2 will be reinstated and that it was approved by the (U.S.) Department of Commerce. I’m hoping it will happen quickly,” said Dr. Kenneth Kunkel, lead scientist on the team developing Atlas-15 at North Carolina State University’s Institute for Climate Studies, a subcontractor. The Commerce Department governs NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service.
Modernization of the nation’s rainfall database was commissioned during the Biden Administration and funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aka Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but it came under scrutiny from budget-cutters after President Donald Trump took office this year.
Kunkel said he was surprised but pleased to hear that Commerce officials are reinstating the project. He noted it follows the widely reported flooding tragedy in Texas on July 4 that killed at least 135 people.
Civil engineers, floodplain managers and analysts say the nation’s current rainfall atlas, No. 14, is outdated, causing infrastructure to be designed in ways that make it vulnerable to increasingly “normal” flooding.
That includes homes, hospitals and water systems built too low in flood-prone areas, drainage systems built too small to drain foreseeable flooding, and highways built where they will flood in years to come due to extreme rainfall that can’t be predicted now. Atlas-15 would modernize rainfall data across the nation in Volume 1 and would provide rainfall predictions based on expected climate changes in Volume 2.
As first reported in the Florida Trident on June 17, both volumes of Atlas-15 were considered at risk of being cancelled by federal budget-cutters and advocates got busy to save it, writing letters and lobbying federal authorities.
Volume 2 was considered most at risk in part because its modeling is based on climate science, which has been downplayed in both Trump administrations. (For example, this month, the administration shut down the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which hosted a library of climate change resources including the renowned National Climate Assessments, which had been performed every four years to take stock of climate changes and their impacts on the nation and world.)
As Atlas-15 advocates feared, work on Volume 2 was officially halted on July 10, despite their broad advocacy campaign to save it. The pause was first reported on July 16, by The Washington Post.
One of several Florida advocates for modernized rainfall data interviewed by the Trident said Monday she, too, has informally heard that Atlas-15 will be completed in full after all, and she is relieved, because the outdated rainfall data currently at her disposal can leave her communities in harm’s way.
“Great news!” said Pinellas County Floodplain Coordinator Lisa Foster on Monday. She works intensively with builders and planners to advance Pinellas’ resilience to flooding and helped manage and recover from extensive hurricane-related flooding last year. She told the Trident in June that only a federal agency such as NOAA has the capacity to model modern and future rainfall data as designed in Atlas-15.
“This rainfall data is critical to model the potential flood inundation from current and future rainfall events and evaluate and plan for the impacts,” Foster said on Monday.
At NC State, Dr. Kunkel said he’s confident his sources are right about Atlas-15 Volume 2 being reinstated, but he cannot put his team back to work on it until the university gets official confirmation that the funding is secure.
Statements from the new administration’s communications team at NOAA did not add clarity. A spokeswoman told the Trident on Monday, “The work to produce Atlas-15 is currently underway, and the work on Volume 2 is forthcoming.”
The spokesperson did not clarify the timeframe for completion of either. The rest of the statement referred to Atlas-14.
The Association of State Floodplain Managers, with more than 7,000 members nationwide, is a big advocate for modernized rainfall data and has campaigned for completion of both volumes of Atlas-15 as originally scheduled for this fall and next year. A spokesperson there said the association does not have official confirmation that the project has been fully reinstated and it is continuing to advocate for it.
Reacting to the deadly floods in Texas, the association issued six urgent recommendations for preventing such tragedies in a July 15 post titled “The Cost of Inaction: What the Texas Floods Reveal About Our Risk.” One of the six recommendations is to replace Atlas-14 with the modernized data of Atlas-15.
“This moment demands not just an outpouring of compassion and support, but also a commitment to systemic change. [The Texas flooding] wasn’t a freak event — it was another devastating reminder of what happens when floodplain development continues unchecked, flood mitigation is underfunded, and political decisions ignore science and expertise.
“What’s more, the catastrophic floods that tore through Texas Hill Country, while the most deadly, were just one of at least four so-called 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States in less than a week,” the statement says, citing extreme flooding in North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois.
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.