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NOAA Announces its Billion-Dollar Disasters Database 'Retired'

The database that recorded natural disasters of significant financial impact will no longer be updated

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WASHINGTON—NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) confirmed this week that it will be retiring a decades-long maintained and updated database that tracks natural disasters with significant financial impact. The database provides information on weather-related disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damages from 1980 to 2024.

A notice published on the agency’s website on May 8 announced that the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product will be retired and that the data will not be updated beyond calendar year 2024. The database's webpage displayed a red alert banner providing limited information about its retirement, but it seemed to suggest agency budget and staff cuts were at least some of the basis for the decision. 

“In alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) will no longer be updating the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product,” the banner alert notified the public.

In April, a leaked White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) pre-decisional memo, 2026 Passback Agency Funding Highlights, detailed proposed budgetary cuts to various federal agencies, including NOAA.

On May 2, the Trump Administration and OMB provided the 2026 budget proposal, which proposed reducing NOAA funding by roughly 24 percent over the previous budget year, impacting funding for research, data collection, equipment, and other agency programs.

According to the Billion Dollar Disaster database, last year, the United States experienced 27 separate weather-related events, the losses of each exceeding $1 billion. These events included one drought, one flooding, 17 severe storms, five tropical cyclones, one wildfire, and two winter storms. The combined events resulted in 568 related deaths.

Two of the tropical cyclones recorded as having caused $1 billion or more in losses include Hurricane Debby and Hurricane Milton. According to NOAA data, last year's hurricane season resulted in more than $30 billion in Florida alone.

The Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters webpage includes an explanation of the database’s methodology and data sources. The NOAA highlights that population growth and increased land development, particularly within vulnerable areas, contribute to the year-over-year increase in losses due to extreme weather events.

“The Billion-dollar disasters product is intended to show the impact of extreme weather and climate events on the economy in inflation-adjusted dollars,” writes the NOAA. “We cannot control how others use the product, but we consistently note that disaster impacts are a combination of increased risk and the possible impacts of climate variability. For example, the increase in population and material wealth over the last several decades is an important cause for the rising costs. These trends are further complicated by the fact that much of the growth has taken place in vulnerable areas like coasts, the wildland-urban interface, and river floodplains. Vulnerability is especially high where building codes are insufficient for reducing damage from extreme events. This is part of the reason that the 2010s decade is far costlier than the 2000s, 1990s, or 1980s (all inflation adjusted to 2024 dollars).”

The agency includes in its written methodology, however, that the database was not developed to track climate change or attribute the recorded events as climate-related events.

“This product has no focus on climate event attribution. The number and cost of weather and climate disasters increased over time in the United States due to a combination of increased exposure (i.e., more assets at risk), vulnerability (i.e., how much damage a hazard of given intensity -wind speed, or flood depth, for example - causes at a location), and the fact that changes in the frequency of some types of extremes that lead to billion-dollar disasters,” says the agency’s website.

Despite the agency’s announcement that the database will be retired and no longer receive annual updates, NOAA says that all past reports and their underlying data spanning 1980-2024 “remain authoritative, archived, and available.”

The end of annual updates to the Billion Dollar Disasters product could impact forecasting and preparation for extreme weather event impacts, especially within those areas where the year-over-year data shows trends toward increasing vulnerability.

Tropical cyclones pose the greatest natural disaster vulnerability for the state of Florida. Hurricanes can cause severe damage through storm surge, wind, flooding, and tornadoes, and historical data shows that Florida has experienced significant losses during past hurricane seasons. 

The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season officially begins on June 1st and ends on November 30th. Though the official start date is June, the peak of hurricane activity typically occurs between mid-August and mid-October.

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  • kat.houston

    The Trump administration doesn’t seem to know that it’s government of, by and for the people. They are dismantling the parts of the government that serve the citizens. Please pay attention people. Read the constitution. This is OUR government.

    Wednesday, May 14 Report this

  • kmskepton

    And add to your list, kat.houston, contact your representatives. They need to hear from "the people."

    Thursday, May 15 Report this