by The Trump administration has changed the course and is working with the development of a new database that would provide the Americans precisely estimates of their Flash flood risk in a warming world, according to a national official of the ocean and atmospheric management and an internal NOAA -E email, which CNN sent on Friday morning.
The administration had the work on the part of the database, known as Atlas 15, that show how a warming world reinforces the flood risks. The database would be the first such resource to take this into account, and it would have applications for all from civil engineers to potential homeowners.
According to reports from CNN and the Washington Post this week and after discussions between the NOAA leadership officers and the trade department, the NOAA was given permission to advance both parts of the analysis in the 2026 financial year.
As CNN previously reported, the break came in a summer of fatal floods, including the catastrophic flash flood event in Texas on the night of July 4, in which at least 130 people were killed.
Unknown content element
– –
ATLAS 15 would replace the outdated database for precipitation frequency estimates, which is referred to as Atlas 14 and which so far has not taken into account climate change, let alone future warming.
Global warming increases the frequency and severity of extreme precipitation events, but the US infrastructure is currently based on the size and frequency of 100-year precipitation events based on the outdated information from Atlas 14.
In other words, designers and builders of the infrastructure in this country carry out their work with the idea that the worst precipitation events occur less often and are less serious than they are.
The first phase of Atlas 15 updates the estimates of the precipitation frequency across the country, but does not include any projections of climate change. This band is said to have come out later this year and have not reached roadblocks.
The second phase of Atlas 15, whose contracts were carried out until Friday, is due to come out in 2026.
“The ongoing work of NOAA on ATLAS-15 will use extensive historical data to create an objective and robust national volume that provide comprehensive precipitation estimates that are based exclusively on data observations for historical precipitation knives,” said NOAA spokesman Kim Doster to CNN. “This approach eliminates speculation and enables us to concentrate our efforts on the most precise and reliable precipitation estimates and to ensure high -quality, implementable information for the American people.”
Working for the work on Atlas 15 had been in for about a month, which was suspected that the project was in danger due to its content of climate change. Recently, the Trump government rejected the Climate.Gov website, refused the experts who were working on a congress national climate assessment and pursued other measures to interrupt climate science research.
In the combination, the two volumes include a national, interactive database with precipitation frequency estimates, including future projections, such as the statistical probability of a 100-year rainfall event at a specific location per year. (A 100th anniversary event is so intense that on average it will only occur every 100 years.)
The database will contain information about how the likelihood and severity of 100 years of precipitation events as well as rarer events and 1,000-year rainstorms will shift depending on how much the planet is heated over the next few decades.
ATLAS 15 is to move the NOAA and those who are dependent on the agency from the outdated assumption that today’s climate corresponds roughly that of a few decades ago that the extremes of precipitation are in change due to the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transport.
A pilot phase of Atlas 15 with estimates of today’s risk of precipitation exclusively for the state of Montana was published last year. It also shows how the precipitation rates for 100 years of events can increase with continued global warming.
The Montana estimates include projections for precipitation frequency estimates at 3 degrees Celsius global warming and 1.5 degrees heating. The world has already heated up by at least 1.2 degrees.
More CNN messages and newsletter create an account at CNN.com
