Atlas 15 Pilot Service Delivery and Stakeholder Engagement

The NOAA National Weather Service Office of Water Prediction (OWP), with funding support from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is revising and updating the current precipitation frequency standard, known as NOAA Atlas 14, to account for changing climate conditions. This new standard, currently in development,is referred to as NOAA Atlas 15. As with all NOAA precipitation frequency standards, Atlas 15 will undergo a public review process to ensure that local knowledge of data, extreme precipitation, and climate patterns are incorporated into the federally derived dataset. NOAA plans to release a version of Atlas 15 for peer review for the contiguous U.S. in 2025, with final publication in 2026. For the rest of the U.S., final publication is planned for 2027, while a peer review process for these areas will be initiated in 2026.

Due to extensive nationwide demand for this dataset, NOAA deliberately included additional engagement with the scientific and practitioner communities by releasing an early development version of the Atlas 15 dataset over the state of Montana, referred to as Atlas 15 Pilot. The Atlas 15 pilot data, which provides only a subset of durations and annual exceedance probabilities, is intended for review and feedback purposes only. This presentation will demonstrate the web dissemination strategy for the Atlas 15 pilot data, and will discuss engagement efforts surrounding the pilot data. It will further provide how these stakeholder engagements are shaping the development of the preliminary and final Atlas 15 dataset.