The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) vital billion-dollar climate disaster database sent shockwaves through the scientific community and public policy circles. This move, seen by many as part of a broader effort to suppress climate-related information, threatened to leave the nation unprepared for escalating natural disasters. However, the environmental advocacy group Climate Central swiftly intervened, reviving the critical dataset and even enhancing its capabilities, underscoring the indispensable role of independent organizations in preserving essential public knowledge.
For decades, the United States has grappled with the increasingly severe financial and human toll of natural disasters. From the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which cost an estimated $201.3 billion, to Superstorm Sandy in 2012 at $71 billion, and the widespread drought and heatwave of the same year totaling $41.7 billion, these events leave an immense national bill. Since 1980, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintained a crucial public resource: a database meticulously tracking every natural disaster in the U.S. that incurred costs of $1 billion or more. This comprehensive record, logging droughts, floods, storms, wildfires, and more, has tallied 403 such events, amounting to over $2.9 trillion in damages and nearly 17,000 lives lost, as detailed by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. More than a simple catalog, this “billion-dollar database” served as an indispensable tool for climate scientists, lawmakers, and insurance groups, guiding research, public policy, and financial risk assessment.
The Database’s Vital Role and Its Abrupt End
The importance of this data grew exponentially as the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events surged. In 2024, the U.S. experienced 27 billion-dollar disasters, following a record-setting 28 events in 2023. This starkly contrasts with the annual average of just nine such events since 1980. The overwhelming consensus among climatologists attributes this alarming increase to climate change, which fuels larger and more frequent storms. However, despite its critical utility, the NOAA database abruptly ceased its updates on May 7, 2025. This decision was a direct consequence of sweeping White House budget cuts affecting government personnel, projects, and agencies.
While no official reason was provided for the termination, Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA head during the Biden presidency and departed upon the Trump administration taking office, offered an informed perspective. He suggested the database was “tainted in the eyes of the administration” due to its explicit connection to climate relevance and impact. Spinrad warned that the removal of such data would inevitably lead to a severe “lack of preparedness for future billion-dollar events,” an ominous prospect given the escalating disaster trends.
A Pattern of Silencing Science and Data Manipulation
The discontinuation of NOAA’s billion-dollar disaster database is not an isolated incident but rather fits into a documented pattern of the Trump administration’s efforts to diminish or obscure climate-related information across federal agencies. Following President Trump’s initial election, a grassroots movement of “guerilla archivists” mobilized to safeguard federal climate data believed to be at risk. While a complete “purge” of datasets didn’t occur, organizations like the Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI) and Columbia University’s Silencing Science Tracker have meticulously documented numerous instances of data manipulation, website alteration, and the suppression of scientific communication.
These efforts included:
- Documents concerning international environmental treaties and national climate policy being moved from current departmental websites to harder-to-access archival locations, as seen with the State Department’s climate action reports.
- Administrative pages, such as the Bureau of Land Management’s climate change page and information on the Montreal Protocol, being relegated to Obama-era web archives. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was particularly impacted, with over 200 climate and energy resource pages for state and local governments becoming accessible only through archives, and the agency’s official website title removing the word “climate.”
- The deliberate scrubbing of environmental terms like “climate change” from agency web pages, including those of the White House, Department of Transportation, and Department of the Interior. The Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Investment Center, for example, dropped “clean” from its title.
- Language on agency websites being altered to align with the administration’s new agenda, exemplified by the Bureau of Land Management replacing “clean and renewable energy” with priorities such as “making America safe through energy independence” and “getting America back to work.”
Beyond website changes, the Silencing Science Tracker recorded 116 instances of scientists being obstructed through budget cuts, staff reductions, unfilled positions, and the cancellation of climate-related research projects. This systematic suppression suggested a prioritization of “pro-growth” economic policies over environmental goals, often at the expense of scientific transparency and public understanding.
Climate Central Steps Up: Revival and Innovation
Recognizing the immense societal importance of the billion-dollar disaster data, the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Climate Central announced its decision to revive the database. On October 22, 2025, Climate Central relaunched the project under the continued leadership of Adam Smith, the applied climatologist who had previously spearheaded the initiative at NOAA. Smith, now Climate Central’s senior climate impact scientist, assures the public that the integrity and quality of the data will not be compromised.
Smith emphasized, “We’re using the same public and private sector partners and gold standard datasets that we used at NOAA. The demand for the revival of this dataset came from many aspects across society. This data set is simply too important to stop being updated.” In fact, Climate Central’s iteration of the database promises to be even more robust. It will offer greater granularity, tracking events that cause as little as $100 million in damages and providing more detailed scrutiny of wildfires by logging individual blazes rather than broad regional figures. Smith noted their acceleration of development through the use of artificial intelligence, allowing for a faster and more innovative rollout than initially anticipated, as highlighted by Climate Central’s own announcement.
The urgency of this revival is underscored by the alarming data already collected by Climate Central for 2025. In just the first six months of the year, there have been 14 billion-dollar events, incurring a staggering total of $101.4 billion. The most expensive of these were the Los Angeles wildfires, which alone accounted for $60 billion in damages, making the first half of 2025 the costliest half-year on record.
The Debate: Science vs. “Political Narratives”
The decision to halt NOAA’s database, and Climate Central’s subsequent efforts to restore it, ignited a debate over the nature and reliability of climate science data. Critics from the political right, such as Texas Republican Congressman Brian Babin, chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, applauded the Trump administration’s move. Babin asserted that the NOAA dataset was “riddled with scientific and methodological flaws” and promoted “political narratives dressed up as science,” implying a lack of trustworthiness for policymakers, a stance detailed in a statement from the House Science Committee.
Similarly, Roger Pielke, Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, published a paper in Nature articulating concerns about the database’s transparency and traceability, and challenging the attribution of increasing billion-dollar events solely to climate change without sufficient evidence. Pielke argued that “public claims promoted by NOAA associated with the dataset and its significance are flawed and at times misleading,” as cited in the Nature publication.
However, these criticisms represent a minority view within the scientific community. An overwhelming share of scientists, governmental agencies, and international bodies—including NASA and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—categorically agree that industrial-era greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet. This warming trend is directly contributing to both the increased frequency and severity of storms, creating conditions more favorable for large-scale disasters. Warmer air, for instance, boosts evaporation, leading to more atmospheric moisture and intensified rainfalls, while warmer oceans provide the energy needed for more violent hurricanes.
Adam Smith firmly upholds the scientific integrity of the database, stating, “The billion-dollar disaster dataset represents a long-term record of authoritative research on major disaster costs incorporating the most robust public and private sector data sources and analysis.” Its robust methodology and broad acceptance by the scientific community underpin its value.
Long-Term Challenges and the Imperative of Information
Despite the scientific solidity of Climate Central’s revived database, its long-term viability faces a significant hurdle: funding. Government agencies like NOAA possess substantially deeper financial resources than non-governmental organizations. Rick Spinrad acknowledged this challenge, noting, “NOAA has spent millions and millions if not billions of dollars collecting the data and analyzing it. It’s going to be a tall order for a non-governmental institution to make the same level of investment.”
The critical information provided by the billion-dollar disaster database is essential for both professionals and the general public. As climate change continues to drive more frequent and costly extreme weather events, access to accurate and comprehensive data is paramount for effective preparedness, mitigation strategies, and informed decision-making. The efforts by Climate Central to preserve and advance this vital public resource underscore a profound commitment to truth and resilience in the face of ongoing environmental and political challenges.
