The initial months of this year marked the highest incidence of weather and climate disasters on record in the United States, as revealed by a recent analysis from the nonprofit Climate Central.
This crucial information may have remained unknown to the general public. Earlier this spring, the Trump administration shut down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s program that monitored weather patterns. This event resulted in damages exceeding $1 billion. Adam Smith, the researcher who spearheaded the analysis, left NOAA in response to this decision.
Following his departure, Climate Central, a research organization dedicated to studying climate change impacts, employed Smith to revamp a database with records dating back to 1980.
Their latest analysis indicates that 14 individual weather events caused damages exceeding $1 billion in the first half of 2025. The wildfires in Los Angeles during January represented the most expensive natural disaster thus far this year, incurring costs over $61 billion, making it the most destructive wildfire recorded.
These findings illustrate that the financial toll from weather and climate disasters continues to escalate as extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, while populations migrate to areas increasingly vulnerable to wildfires and floods.
The report serves as a testament to the shift towards nonprofit organizations taking over federal initiatives that traditionally monitored and measured the effects of climate change, particularly as the Trump administration moves to scale back climate science funding. President Trump labeled climate change as a “crook’s job,” and the administration has reduced funding for clean energy initiatives while stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to control greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming.
Jennifer Brady, a senior data analyst and research manager at Climate Central involved in the project, noted that the staff was profoundly affected by the discontinuation of NOAA’s extensive disaster database, prompting them to take action.
“This has always been one of our most valued datasets. It narrates diverse stories. It articulates the narrative of climate change as well as the implications of where individuals reside and how they live at risk,” Brady stated. “I am ready to take it home.”
Kim Doster, a spokesperson for NOAA, expressed appreciation that the $1 billion disaster product has secured funding from sources other than taxpayers.
“NOAA remains committed to upholding ethical, unbiased research and reallocating resources to products that comply with executive directives aimed at restoring high standards in science,” Doster conveyed via email.
This database has been a source of political contention. House Republicans raised concerns with NOAA officials in 2024 regarding allegations of “deceptive data.” Recently, Senate Democrats proposed legislation to obligate NOAA to publish and update this dataset biannually, claiming it helps lawmakers in disaster funding decisions. However, this bill is currently stalled in committee and faces bleak prospects in the Republican-majority Senate.
Last month, officials from the Trump administration informed NBC News that NOAA terminated the database project due to uncertainty in accurately estimating disaster costs. The official highlighted that the project would incur annual costs of around $300,000, require considerable staff effort, and yield “pure information at best, with no clear objective.”
“This data is frequently utilized to bolster the claim that climate change enhances the frequency, severity, and expense of disasters, neglecting other factors like increased development in flood-prone and weather-sensitive areas as well as the cyclical variations in climate across different regions,” the official remarked at the time.
Despite this, Brady contends that the database has always acknowledged the significance of population shifts and climate change in exacerbating disaster costs.
She noted that Climate Central’s study employs the same methodologies and data sources as the NOAA database, including claims from the National Flood Insurance Program, NOAA storm event data, private insurance claims, and more.
This analysis captures the “direct costs” of disasters, such as damage to infrastructure, buildings, and crops, while omitting other considerations like loss of life, health-related disaster expenses, and economic losses to “natural capital” such as forests and wetlands. All data has been adjusted for inflation.
A recent evaluation of the first half of 2025 suggests that this year is on track to become the deadliest recorded year, despite the absence of hurricanes making landfall in the continental United States.
In the previous year, NOAA reported that $27 billion in disaster costs totaled around $182.7 billion, marking the second-highest total of billion-dollar disasters in the report’s history, following the figures from 2023.
Climate Central is not alone in its efforts to reproduce the work previously undertaken by the federal government as the Trump administration cut back on climate science.
A collective of dismissed NOAA employees established climate.us, a nonprofit successor to climate.gov, the former federal site that offered data and analyses to help the general public grasp climate issues. The site went offline this summer.
Edited by Rebecca Lindsay climate.gov. Before her termination in February, along with other NOAA colleagues who co-founded the nonprofit, Lindsay stated they had raised about $160,000 with plans to host climate.gov, where they will share their archives and begin publishing new articles on climate change in the upcoming weeks.
“We are preserving this information to ensure that when people seek answers about climate status, they can find them,” Lindsey asserted.
Both the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society have announced intentions to publish a special collection of studies focused on climate change, particularly after the Trump administration informed volunteer scientists working on the National Climate Assessment that their services were no longer required.
The administration dismissed employees from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, responsible for organizing the National Climate Assessment and coordinating climate research initiatives across various federal offices.
Walter Robinson, from the American Weather Society’s publication committee, highlighted that the National Climate Assessment was “effectively stopped” due to the government’s decision, which he described as an “abandonment” of federal duty.
Though the new collection cannot replace comprehensive assessments, it aims to consolidate the latest scientific understanding on climate change impacts within the United States, he added. The research will be featured in numerous scientific journals on an ongoing basis.
“Individuals are stepping up,” Robinson remarked regarding his group’s endeavors. “As scientists, we do our utmost.”
Source: www.nbcnews.com
