Modernizing NOAA's extreme precipitation guidance for high-hazard infrastructure in a changing climate

Under recent Congressional support, NOAA has renewed capability to study, develop, and operationalize updated probable maximum precipitation (PMP) estimates to guide the safe construction and operation of the nation’s high-hazard infrastructure.

Acknowledging the well-established tensions between national-scale extreme precipitation risk guidance that works for all, and the intricacies of cutting edge science at small scales required to address local flood risk, a first priority in this endeavor is for NOAA to sponsor a National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine study. This study is presently underway and assessing salient science questions, user needs, and modern scientific capabilities to ultimately guide sound extreme precipitation science application for real-world infrastructure decision-making.

NOAA is also actively pursuing research on extreme precipitation estimation as represented by existing, experimental, and potential future datasets as applicable to extreme precipitation risk assessment. These include quantitative precipitation estimates, quantitative precipitation forecasts, numerical weather prediction-based datasets, and climate model projection datasets. Research is also ongoing to explore a portfolio of diverse scientific methods and approaches to generate new datasets to more specifically address the nuanced needs of PMP/high-hazard infrastructure-focused user communities.

This talk will combine an overview of NOAA’s opportunity to modernize PMP with snapshots of early results focusing on the assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of applying NOAA’s existing operational and experimental products to the challenge of modernizing PMP. We also welcome feedback and discussion from the audience of these research plans, as well as invite potential stakeholder partnerships for testing and evaluation.