Beyond the Data Blog

The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has released the final update to its 2022 Billion-dollar disaster report (www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions), confirming another intense year of costly disasters and extremes throughout much of the country. 2022 tied 2017 and 2011 for the third highest number of billion-dollar disasters. 2022 was also third highest in total costs (behind 2017 and 2005), with a price tag of at least $165.0 billion. This total annual cost may rise by several billion when we’ve fully accounted for the costs of the December 21-26 Central and Eastern winter storm/cold wave. A note about images: The images in this post are screenshots from the Billi…   Read article

Christopher W. Landsea is the Chief of the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch at the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center in Miami, FL. Tom Knutson is a Senior Scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, NJ. It should be noted that the following discussion represents the authors’ opinions only and does not represent any official position of NHC, NWS, GFDL, or NOAA in general. A NOAA State of the Science Fact Sheet on “Atlantic Hurricanes and Climate”, which has been reviewed by NOAA, is also available. Last month, in a Beyond the Data blog post, we examined whether scientists can detect any significant change in Atlantic hurricane activity to…   Read article

Christopher W. Landsea is the Chief of the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch at the National Weather Service's (NWS) National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, FL. Tom Knutson is a Senior Scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GDFL) in Princeton, NJ.  The following discussion represents the authors’ opinions only and does not represent any official position of NHC, NWS, GFDL, or NOAA in general. A NOAA State of the Science Fact Sheet on “Atlantic Hurricanes and Climate”, which has been reviewed by NOAA, is also available. Last summer, one of us (Chris) co-wrote a National Hurricane Center Inside the Eye blog post about the 2020 hurricane season and whether it…   Read article

Last week, our team at NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) released the final update to its 2021 Billion-dollar disaster report (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions), confirming what much of the nation experienced throughout 2021: another year of frequent and costly extremes. The year came in second to 2020 in terms of number of disasters (20 versus 22) and third in total costs (behind 2017 and 2005), with a price tag of $145 billion. 2021 Highlights In 2021, the U.S. experienced 20 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, putting 2021 in second place for the most disasters in a calendar year, behind the record 22 separate billion-dollar events in 2020. &nbs…   Read article

NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has released the final 2020 update to its Billion-dollar disaster report (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions), officially confirming what communities across the nation experienced first-hand: 2020 was a historic year of extremes. There were 22 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the United States, shattering the previous annual record of 16 events, which occurred in 2017 and 2011. The billion-dollar events of 2020 included a record 7 disasters linked to tropical cyclones, 13 to severe storms, 1 to drought, and 1 to wildfires. The 22 events cost the nation a combined $95 billion in damages.  Adding the 20…   Read article