What could it cost? Trump just made it much harder to track the nation’s worst weather disasters US abruptly stops tracking costs of the most devastating storms. Ashley Belanger – May 8, 2025 2:17 pm | 42 Demonstrators hold signs in the street outside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, US, on Monday, March 3, 2025. Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg Demonstrators hold signs in the street outside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, US, on Monday, March 3, 2025. Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more The Trump administration's steep staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) triggered shutdowns of several climate-related programs Thursday. Perhaps most notably, the NOAA announced it would be shuttering the "billion-dollar weather and climate disasters" database for vague reasons. Since 1980, the database made it possible to track the growing costs of the nation's most devastating weather events, critically pooling various sources of private data that have long been less accessible to the public. In that time, 403 weather and climate disasters in the US triggered more than $2.945 trillion in costs, and NOAA notes that's a conservative estimate. Considering that CNN noted the average number of disasters in the past five years jumped from nine annually to 24, shutting down the database could leave communities in the dark on costs of emerging threats. All the NOAA can likely say is to continue looking at the historic data to keep up with trends. "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," NOAA announced. "All past reports, spanning 1980-2024, and their underlying data remain authoritative, archived, and available," NOAA said, but no data would be gathered for 2025 or any year after. According to NCEI's FAQ, every state has experienced at least one billion-dollar disaster since 1980, while some states, like Texas, have been hit by more than 100. The Central, South, and Southeast regions of the US are most likely to be hurt most by the data loss, as those regions "typically experience a higher frequency of billion-dollar disasters," the FAQ said. Shutting the database down now seems like a bad idea, since the FAQ confirmed "the number and cost of disasters are increasing over time" due to factors like people building larger or cheaper properties in vulnerable areas and "changes in the frequency of some types of extremes that lead to billion-dollar disasters." Those include notable rises in vulnerability to "drought, lengthening wildfire seasons in the western states, and the potential for extremely heavy rainfall becoming more common in the eastern states," the FAQ said. Previously, the FAQ noted, this database also helped monitor socioeconomic vulnerabilities, helping communities plan to avert future harms by comparing county extreme weather risk scores with county data on minority or elderly populations, as well as populations living with a disability or below the poverty line. Although the database purported to have "no focus on climate event attribution," its tracking appeared to conflict with Trump orders prohibiting DEI and undoing climate initiatives, alongside other crippling cuts to science. CNN dubbed the database's closure "another Trump-administration blow to the public’s view into how fossil fuel pollution is changing the world around them and making extreme weather more costly." It's unlikely that any private company, nonprofit, or academic research group could replicate the effort, CNN suggested, since private industry otherwise shields its data from public view. Losing the database will not only impact how local governments assess the most devastating weather catastrophes but will also hobble all research dependent on the database to expand analysis of concerning trends. And it comes at a time when the Trump administration is threatening even more cuts at NOAA, planning to eliminate its research division and climate labs, CNN reported. Concerned members of the public are encouraged to send comments to ncei.orders@noaa.gov. Ashley Belanger Senior Policy Reporter Ashley Belanger Senior Policy Reporter Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. 42 Comments