A climate nonprofit is bringing back an important federal database that tracks billion-dollar weather disasters, which the Trump administration stopped updating in May. This database, originally created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will return this fall under the care of Climate Central, a climate-focused nonprofit.
Climate Central has hired Adam Smith, the former NOAA climatologist who ran the disaster tracker for over ten years. Smith left NOAA in April after facing pressure to halt work on the project. The Trump administration had been cutting back on climate science efforts, including disabling key climate websites and proposing to dismantle much of NOAA’s research.
The database records financial losses caused by severe weather like storms, droughts, and wildfires, each costing at least a billion dollars. Smith and his team’s work has been crucial for the National Climate Assessment and has helped insurance companies understand the risks posed by extreme weather. Unlike other reports, the NOAA tool allowed users to explore data by state, year, and type of disaster, making it a valuable and flexible resource.
Since 1980, Smith’s team found that the U.S. averaged nine billion-dollar disasters each year. But in recent years, that number has jumped sharply. In 2023, the country faced a record 28 such events, including a costly drought and the deadly Maui wildfires. So far in 2024, there have already been 27 disasters with damages over a billion dollars.
Federal research shows that climate change is driving a growing number of costly weather disasters, costing the U.S. about $150 billion annually. Experts warn that these losses will likely increase as global temperatures rise.
The end of NOAA’s disaster tracking sparked concerns in the insurance industry. Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, said the public data helped raise awareness about the impact of extreme weather on both insured and economic losses.
Looking ahead, Smith hopes to expand the database to include disasters causing $100 million or more in damage, such as severe hailstorms in the Midwest and Mountain West. Climate Central also plans to summarize wildfire damages by individual blazes rather than by region, providing more detailed and transparent data.
The nonprofit has also built tools showing how human-driven climate change influences extreme weather. Smith mentioned that exploring “economic attribution” — linking specific disaster costs to climate change — would be a next step worth pursuing.
With Climate Central’s efforts, this valuable database is set to return, giving communities, insurers, and policymakers better insight into the growing financial toll of extreme weather in a warming world.