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It would be harder for insurers and scientists to study wildfires, storms and other “billion dollar disasters,” which are growing more frequent as the planet warms.
May 8, 2025Updated 2:38 p.m. ET
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday it would stop tracking the cost of the country’s most expensive disasters, those which cause at least $1 billion in damage.
The move would leave insurance companies, researchers and government policymakers without information to help understand the patterns of major disasters like hurricanes, drought or wildfires, and their economic consequences, starting this year. Those events are becoming more frequent or severe as the planet grows hotter, although not all disasters are linked to climate change.
It’s the latest effort from the Trump administration to restrict or eliminate climate research. In recent weeks the administration has dismissed the authors working on the nation’s biggest climate assessment, planned to eliminate National Parks grants focused on climate change, and released a budget plan that would cut significantly climate science from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Energy and Defense departments.
Researchers and lawmakers criticized Thursday’s decision.
Jesse M. Keenan, associate professor and director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane University in New Orleans, said ending the data collection would cripple efforts by federal and state governments to set budgets or make decisions on investment in infrastructure.
“It defies logic,” he said. Without the database, “the U.S. government’s flying blind as to the cost of extreme weather and climate change.”
In a comment on Bluesky, Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, wrote “It’s anti-science, anti-safety, and anti-American.”
English (US)