Nonprofit Revives NOAA Billion-Dollar Disaster Data to Support Risk Modeling

A critical federal dataset tracking billion-dollar weather and climate disasters will be revived by the nonprofit Climate Central after NOAA ceased updates earlier this year. The database, originally managed by climatologist Dr. Adam B. Smith, has long served insurers, policymakers, and researchers as a key resource for modeling natural disaster risks across the U.S. Dr. Smith will continue leading the effort under the nonprofit’s management.

The move follows NOAA’s May decision to stop calculating the costs of individual weather events that exceed $1 billion in damages—events that are becoming increasingly frequent. The absence of this data threatened to leave risk managers and insurers without a trusted, standardized reference point for assessing the economic impact of hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and droughts.

Climate Central will expand the database’s scope by including events causing at least $100 million in damage and tracking specific wildfires instead of summarizing losses by season or region. This upgrade aims to provide more granular and actionable data for the insurance and climate science communities.

Meanwhile, despite funding cuts earlier this year, the administration has announced the rehiring of 450 key personnel at NOAA’s National Weather Service. In addition, a court injunction has temporarily halted the shutdown of FEMA’s BRIC program, which has invested billions in disaster mitigation efforts. Together, these developments suggest renewed momentum for resilience-focused infrastructure and data initiatives.