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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 1800s. Recent federal infrastructure spending has dedicated funding for updating Atlas-14, but the process could take years and the demand 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 documents the challenges of combining the methods; and created tools and techniques that can be applied to future iterations of climate change projections. County-level reports and statewide maps are now available.
Ryan Noe is a senior scientist in Dr. Bonnie Keeler's lab in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy area of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He manages projects on water and land use, with a focus on co-developing actionable research with state agencies, conservation organizations, and policymakers in Minnesota. He also collaborates with the Natural Capital Project, where he contributes to the development of tools and methods to understand the biophysical, economic, and social consequences of changing land uses. He has a background in geospatial analysis which he uses to model and map the public returns on investment from conservation activities, and to prioritize future investments.