U.S. Government to Stop Tracking the Costs of Extreme Weather

The Oceanic and Atmospheric National Administration said Thursday that it would stop tracking the cost of disasters plus expenses in the country, those that cause at least $ 1 billion in damages.

The measure would leave insurance companies, researchers and government policy formulators without information to help understand important disaster patterns such as hurricanes, droughts or forest fires, and their economic contracts, as of this year. These events are becoming more frequent or severe as the planet becomes hotter, Althegh not all disasters are linked to climate change.

It is the last effort of the Trump administration to restrict or eliminate climatic research. In the last week, the Administration has fired the authors who work in the largest climatic evaluation of nations, planned to eliminate subsidies from national parks focused on climate change, and published a budget plan that would reduce significantly and the energy that the United States abandons.

Researchers and legislators criticized Thursday’s decision.

Jesse M. Keenan, associate professor and director of the Center for Climate Change and Urbanism of the University of Tulane in New Orleans, said that ending data collection would paralyze the efforts of federal and state governments to establish budgets in investment in investment.

“Challenge logic,” he said. Without the database, “the blind flyer of the US government.

In a comment about Bluesky, Senator Ed Markey, Massachusetts Democrat, written “is anti-science, anti-sexual and anti-American.”

Few institutions can double the child of the information provided by the database, said Virginia Iglesias, a climate researcher at the University of Colorado. “It is one of the most consistent and reliable records of economic loss related to climate in the country,” he said. “The power of the database lies in its credibility.”

The so -called disasters of billions of dollars, those with costs that globate at 10 figures or that have more bone that increase over time. In the 1980s, when the record begins, there were only three per year, on average, when it was adjusted for inflation. For the period from 2020 to 2024, the average was 23 per year.

In total, at least 403 of such events have occurred in the United States since 1980. Last year there were 27, a second only for 2023 (which had 28).

Last year’s disasters included Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which together fell around $ 113 billion in damages and more than 250 deaths, a large hail storm in Colorado that caused approximately $ 3 billion in damages and a year of damage for damage and damage for damage and claimed the life of more than 100 people against heat exposure.

NOAA’s National Environmental Information Centers plans to stop tracking these disasters of one billion dollars in response to “evolving priorities, legal mandates and personnel changes,” the agency said in an email.

When asked, the agency did not say if another NOAA branch or federal agency would continue to track and publicly inform the price of such disasters. The announcement said the agency would make available data filed from 1980 to 2024. But the amount in Disaster dollars from 2025 onwards, such as the forest fires of Los Angeles and its billions of estimated damages, would not be tracked and informed to the public.

“You can’t fix what you don’t measure,” said Erin Sikorsky, director of the Climate and Security Center. “If we lose this information about the costs of these disasters, the American people and Congress won what risk they are raising the climate for our country.”

Other institutions or agencies could not double data collection because it includes patented information that colleagues are cautious to share, ms. Sikorsky said. “It is a rather unique contribution.”