An indicator lost: big disaster costs

0:01NPR.

0:11This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods. And I'm Waylon Wong. We have seen a lot of major natural disasters in the U.S. in the last couple of years. In 2024 alone, there were hurricanes Milton and Helene, plus tornadoes in the central and southeastern parts of the country. And these disasters we're talking about all shared something in common. They all hit at least$1 billion in costs or damages. And we know this because the federal government tabulated the economic impact of these extreme events. So not quite a decade ago, an inflection point in terms of the frequency, the diversity and the magnitude and the cost of these extremes just went to another level and generally stayed at that level.

0:55That's Adam Smith, not the economist, a climatologist. It has got a check center, he was. Oh, yeah. Good catch, Darian. This Adam Smith spearheaded something called the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters Database of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. NOAA is well known for its sophisticated weather forecasting, but it also calculated the cost of climate disasters going back to 1980. This was information that state and local governments used for budgeting and planning. But NOAA will no longer be collecting this data. Last month, the federal government said it was retiring the billion-dollar disaster database.

1:332024 was its final year. Today on the show, Adam tells us about the work he did, why he feels it was important, and how he's trying to keep it going.

2:10Learn more about earning a relevant degree at capella.edu. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Recorded Future. Every day, millions of cyber threats compete for attention, but only a few truly matter to your business. As a leading threat intelligence company, Recorded Future cuts through the noise with precision intelligence. That's why top banks and governments trust them. Because security leaders don't just react. They foresee spotting the signals that others miss and acting before threats become setbacks. Recorded future. Know what matters. Act first. Adam Smith is a climatologist who spent the last two decades of his career at NOAA.

2:50Well before that, he was a kid growing up in North Carolina. He was in third grade when Hurricane Hugo came through the region. I think I recall going to bed that night knowing that it was on the way and hearing the howling winds and the trees just creaking and rubbing against the house and then the wind and the rain. But I do remember waking up the next morning with many trees down on the ground, but thankful our house was fine. Adam also lived through a super storm in 1993, known as the 1993 Storm of the Century. That walloped much of the eastern and southeastern U.S. with tornadoes and extreme snowfall.

3:30Today, he's based in Asheville, North Carolina, which was hit by Hurricane Helene last year. Adam says that extreme weather can really shape someone's life. In his case, his interesting climate brought him to the federal government, specifically NOAA. That's where he was the architect of the billion-dollar disaster database. Adams says that when he started, the team was producing an annual report that was limited in scale. Under his watch, the database expanded into a comprehensive online portal with interactive maps and graphs. And it pulled in numbers from over a dozen public and private sources, including the U.S.

4:07Department of Agriculture and insurance companies. Over the decades, that summed to over 400 weather events whose damages totaled at least a billion dollars. We're talking homes, businesses, government buildings, vehicles, boats, forests, electricity grids. But it's also important to caveat that even though it was a comprehensive estimate as far as all this information, it was still a conservative estimate in terms of you're not able to truly measure what is completely lost because the data just isn't that comprehensive in the world. And Adam says his work went beyond just tallying up how many buildings and vehicles were damaged or destroyed.

4:49He wanted the information to be public and presented in a way that was useful to people. Let's say a family deciding where to move might consult a map showing risky areas for weather events. State and local governments might look at the damages from past disasters to plan their budgets and how to build more hardened infrastructure. Numbers on a spreadsheet is one thing, but understanding what's actually been below those numbers, you know, people's lives, having to rebuild and or perhaps just move and start over completely. So there's different ways to kind of slice and dice it and the data to make it a little bit more human centric.

5:24That's important information for people to make, you know, decisions, whether it's investing or moving or selling their home or any other major life decision. What was it like to do this job during, let's say, the last seven to 10 years when, as you saw these kinds of disasters really ramp up in magnitude? Over the last several years, it became more challenging to keep up with the number of the events we had experienced. I believe last year in 2024, there were 27 separate billion dollar weather and climate disasters across the United States. The year before that, there were 28. Both of those years are well above any other year inflation adjusted to present day dollars.

6:07The team's work did draw criticism. Last year, a researcher from the American Enterprise Institute, which is a center-right think tank, published an academic paper. It said that NOAA did a poor job identifying its data sources and methodology. Now, the paper did say that human-caused climate change is real and important, but it questioned whether NOAA was drawing too strong of a link between economic losses and trends in extreme weather events. This is because the cost of these disasters are also related to non-climate factors, like population growth and wealth. The more people living in an area, the more there is to damage, even if the frequency and intensity of weather events is unchanged.

6:48Adam said he was willing to entertain criticism of his work at NOAA, and there were ways he wanted to keep improving the database. What were the things that you desperately wanted, better or more information, and it was just very hard to get? Yeah, so there are some types of non-market losses that are really hard to capture and are particularly impactful. And we were actually working on integrating some of those, including the mental and physical health care related losses. So, for example, wildfire seasons out west, you know, you could have poor air quality for weeks to months. You know, so it could really impact vulnerable, sensitive groups where poor air quality could exacerbate their underlying health conditions.

7:30Researchers have started to study the health impacts of the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles earlier this year. But Adam and his team at NOAA won't be tracking the economic cost of those wildfires now that the database is being retired. Adam says the new administration marked a turning point. Between layoffs, proposed cuts to NOAA's budget, and a shift away from climate research, Adam thought the billion-dollar disaster database was in trouble. So in April, he took a government offer to leave his job. His last day was May 2nd, and he was right about the database. A week later, NOAA said it would be retired.

8:06The database now has a red banner on the homepage saying that because of evolving priorities and staffing changes, it will no longer be updated. We reached out to NOAA for more details. Public Affairs Officer John Bateman repeated that same language and noted that previous data and reports are still available. Honestly, if you would talk to me six months ago, I wouldn't think we'd be having this conversation. Oh, really? Yeah, but here we are. What was your last day like? Yeah, it's pretty surreal. To work after graduate school for any one place for 20 years, it feels like you're leaving family.

8:45All the things you've worked for, it's just hard and strange. And it still feels bizarre, frankly. But this has created, I would say, a temporary vacuum of information in the public space for this type of detailed analysis. And it happens at a time when we need this information more than ever, actually. Adam says he'd like to continue the billion-dollar disaster analysis somewhere else, maybe with the backing of nonprofits or private companies. This won't be an easy job because the work relies on so many different data sets, many of which come from the federal government and might not be updated themselves anymore.

9:24You know, fingers crossed that some of these major public federal data sets don't go completely silent, don't go completely dark. Because if they did, that would present some challenge. It's a pretty complicated landscape to redevelop something like this. It's certainly not straightforward. But that's where we are right now with it. And Adam isn't done. I wouldn't mind going back to the federal government at NOAA or another agency in several years down the road when perhaps the political headwinds are not so turbulent. OK, well, thank you so much. And please keep us posted on your next moves with the project.

10:05Thank you so much.

10:10This episode was produced by Cooper Katz McKim and engineered by Jimmy Keely. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kicking Cannon is our show's editor, and The Indicator is a production of NPR.

10:24This message comes from BetterHelp. To mark World Mental Health Day, BetterHelp is thanking the therapists who change people's lives all around the world by providing accessible mental health support. With over 12 years of experience matching clients with therapists and one of the world's largest online therapist networks, BetterHelp can help you find the right therapist. Visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR for 10 % off your first month. This message comes from Grammarly. From emails to reports and project proposals, it's hard to meet the demands of today's competing priorities without some help. Grammarly is the essential AI communication assistant that boosts your productivity at work so you can get more of what you need done faster.

11:07Just a few clicks can tailor your tone and writing so you come across exactly as you intend. Get time back to focus on your high-impact work. Download Grammarly for free at grammarly.com slash podcast. That's grammarly.com slash podcast.