The insurance industry is losing access to a long-standing tool for gauging the economic toll of extreme weather events. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has announced it will no longer update its Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, a move that comes amid broader federal budget cuts to climate initiatives.
A Trusted Resource Comes to a Close
Since its inception in 1980, NOAA’s Billion-Dollar Disasters database has documented 403 events that each caused at least $1 billion in economic damage. The tool has become a trusted benchmark not only for policymakers and the public but also for insurers tracking the scale and frequency of catastrophic weather events.
NOAA’s announcement, made quietly on May 8 via a “notice of change” on its website, cited “evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes” as reasons for the discontinuation. Although the data will remain archived and accessible online, it will no longer be updated going forward.
The Role of the Database in the Insurance Sector
Mark Friedlander of the Insurance Information Institute emphasized that while NOAA’s data is valuable, the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry has independent mechanisms for tracking covered losses. Importantly, NOAA’s database includes total economic losses, not just insured losses, providing a broader perspective on the financial burden of disasters.
Even without NOAA’s updates, Friedlander reassured stakeholders that this change will not affect the availability of property insurance or how storm claims are processed. “Insurers will continue to act as financial first responders,” he said, highlighting the industry’s role in disaster recovery efforts.
A Sign of Broader Climate Funding Cuts
NOAA’s decision is part of a larger trend of reduced federal support for climate-related programs. The White House’s April budget proposal included a plan to remove an entire wing of NOAA, slashing the agency’s funding by nearly $1.7 billion, or 27%. On the same day as the database announcement, FEMA’s acting director, Cameron Hamilton, was ousted after opposing similar cuts and defending the agency’s preparedness efforts for the upcoming hurricane season.
What Happens Next?
The loss of regular updates from NOAA’s disaster database leaves a gap in a widely cited, government-backed source of economic data on climate catastrophes. While the insurance industry has its own data sources, NOAA’s reports helped contextualize total losses, offering insight into the scale of damage beyond just the insured segment.
This development may prompt insurers, reinsurers, and risk analysts to rely more heavily on private and proprietary data platforms. It could also renew calls for public-private collaboration to ensure transparency and consistency in climate risk modeling, especially as extreme weather events grow more frequent and costly.
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