NOAA’s Billion-Dollar Climate Disaster Database Is Going Dark

There are many ways to ignore climate reality. One of the most effective is to stop measuring it.

That’s what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just did. Quietly, without much public fanfare, the agency announced that it will retire its Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database after 2024. This isn’t just an administrative footnote. It’s a seismic shift — one that will blind regulators, businesses, and the public to one of the clearest metrics we had on the cost of climate chaos.

And if you run a business that lives in the physical world — supply chains, real estate, agriculture, energy, insurance — you should be paying attention.

We Used to Measure the Cost of Chaos. Now We Won’t.

For more than 40 years, NOAA’s database tracked extreme weather and climate disasters that cost over $1 billion — standardized, inflation-adjusted, and aggregated from private insurers, reinsurance models, and local governments. The result was one of the most reliable trendlines in climate policy: 403 events since 1980, nearly $3 trillion in damages. And rising fast. In the last five years alone, the annual average ballooned to 24 such disasters. In 2023, the record was 28.

This wasn’t just a tally. It was a window — showing how decisions made in boardrooms, town councils, and federal agencies added up in the face of a warming world. It wasn’t a tool for attribution, strictly speaking. NOAA was careful to note that the database didn’t focus on assigning blame to climate change. But when billion-dollar disasters become more frequent, more intense, and more expensive, you don’t need attribution to see the pattern.

Now, that window goes dark.

NOAA says it’s ending the database due to staff reductions. But those reductions didn’t fall from the sky. They were designed. This is part of a larger pattern under the Trump administration — a quiet dismantling of climate infrastructure. Labs are closing. Research divisions are being gutted.

Recent budget proposals have outlined a 27% cut to NOAA’s funding, including the elimination of its Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. This office has been central to advancing our understanding of climate systems and developing predictive models that inform everything from agriculture to disaster preparedness.

Furthermore, the administration has proposed significant reductions to the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget, targeting programs that support renewable energy and environmental justice initiatives. The Energy Star program, which has guided consumers toward energy-efficient products for decades, is also on the chopping block.

You can call this austerity, but that’s too generous. This the slow, procedural asphyxiation of information. Kill the programs. Retire the datasets. Make it harder for the public — and yes, for business — to see what’s coming.

The Market Needs This Data. But It Can’t Recreate It.

The private sector thrives on clarity. You can’t hedge against risks you can’t see. And this database was one of the few places where public and private data came together to offer that clarity. It pulled from proprietary sources — reinsurance models, private claims, damage assessments — that most companies can’t independently access.

Insurance companies, in particular, depend on historical data to assess risk and set premiums. Without reliable government data, they may face greater uncertainty, leading to higher costs for consumers and businesses alike.

This is a problem. As climate risk accelerates, as insurers recalibrate premiums, as asset managers weigh environmental exposure, we are choosing to know less, just when we need to know more. That’s not just a political problem. It’s an economic one.

Swiss Re recently projected that global insured losses in 2025 will hit $145 billion — growing 5 to 7 percent annually. These aren’t abstract figures. These are rising costs passed to customers, absorbed by governments, borne by communities.

When institutions turn away from reality, others have to pick up the slack. Some in the private sector will try. But they’ll do it with less transparency, more fragmentation, and fewer incentives to serve the public interest. And let’s be honest: most companies don’t have the time or resources to replicate federal-scale data infrastructure. Nor should they.

So the question isn’t just what data we’ve lost. It’s what capacity we’re losing — to think clearly, to plan wisely, to act collectively.

The cost of climate change is growing. But now, the price of seeing that cost is too.