NOAA's precipitation expectation model, Atlas 14, is based on backward-looking data and does not incorporate the effects of global warming.
could be wasted because state highway and bridge projects are using an outdated government precipitation model to determine future flood risk, according to a new report from First Street Foundation, a nonprofit climate risk research and technology firm.
The First Street report compared the government's precipitation forecasting standard, which is used by and sometimes mandated for state infrastructure projects, with much more current rainfall data that projects into the future.
NOAA officials are well aware of the issues with Atlas 14. The agency has received over $30 million in funding to modernize it to, "to not only use the best available historical information, but also leverage outputs from the various different climate models that are available today," Salas said. "Where I'm standing right now," Eby said by the side of Route 18, "the believed one-in-10-year event is actually a one-in-four-year event, and over the next 30 years will go down all the way to a one-in-two-year event, meaning every other year we would expect extreme precipitation to flood this location."
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