The high costs of climate change
U.S. has experienced 241 billion-dollar weather disasters since ’80: NOAA data
The number of billiondollar weather disasters in the United States has more than doubled in recent years, as devastating hurricanes and ferocious wildfires that experts suspect are fueled in part by climate change have ravaged swaths of the country, according to data released by the federal government Wednesday.
Since 1980, the United States has experienced 241 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage reached or exceeded $1 billion, when adjusted for inflation, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Between 1980 and 2013, according to NOAA, the nation averaged roughly half a dozen such disasters a year. Over the most recent five years, that number has jumped to more than 12.
“We had about twice the number of billion-dollar disasters than we have in an average year over the last 40 years or so,” Deke Arndt, chief of the monitoring branch at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Wednesday.
NOAA said 14 separate weather and climate disasters, costing at least $1 billion each, hit the United States during 2018. The disasters killed at least 247 people and cost the nation an estimated $91 billion. About $73 billion was attributable Hurricanes Michael and Florence and the wildfires that raged across the West.
Yet 2018 did not set the record for the most expensive year for such disasters. That belongs to 2017, when Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria combined with devastating Western wildfires and other natural catastrophes caused $306 billion in total damage. They were part of a historic year that saw 16 separate events that cost more than $1 billion each.
But the most recent numbers continue what some experts call an alarming trend.
“There’s this knot in your stomach where you know there is some big piece of this that is probably coming from climate change, but at the same time, there are a lot of moving parts,” said Solomon Hsiang, a public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who has studied how natural disasters affect societies.
Many factors contribute to the cost of any one disaster. For instance, a hurricane that hits a heavily populated area, such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012 or Hurricane Harvey in 2017, is likely to have a far higher economic impact than one that hits a less crowded part of the country. The nation’s growing population, inconsistent building codes and the fact that many cities and infrastructure sit near coasts or along rivers also play a role. But increasingly, experts say, so does climate change.
“The recent past is likely prologue,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who has studied the economic impact climate change is likely to have on different parts of the country in the coming decades.
Climate change has helped to shape the severity of at least some of the natural disasters in recent years, said Kerry Emanuel, a top hurricane expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For instance, Emanuel has published research suggesting the enormous rainfall Hurricane Harvey dumped on Houston was made more possible because of climate change.
However, that’s different than saying that the overall aggregate damage figures are definitely rising because of climate change. That hasn’t been proven to a 95 percent certainty, Emanuel said, but there are reasons to suspect climate change is playing a notable role.
“If you’re assessing a risk — a risk you have every reason to think exists — nobody would ever require that certainty,” Emanuel continued. “Generals in the battlefield would never wait for 95 percent certainty.”
There are also projections that the impact of climate change should soon be making itself felt in the cost of at least some disasters. A 2014 analysis by the Rhodium Group, for instance, projected that by 2030, the average damage from hurricanes and nor’easters, to the East and Gulf coasts in particular, should be $3 billion to $7.3 billion higher each year. That’s if climate change continues unabated.
The trend is an unsustainable one, Hsiang said.
“These costs are enormous. If we really continue to sustain costs like this going forward, many elements of the way we’ve managed resources in society are just not financially sustainable,” he said. “We are spending huge amounts of money on disaster relief ... We’re always responding to a disaster by picking up the pieces after they occur.”
While fires and hurricanes are responsible for the bulk of disaster-related damages and headlines, other events routinely surpassed the billion-dollar mark over the years. They include droughts, hailstormsand tornadoes. told reporters