America’s Most Expensive Climate Disasters
There is no question that climate change has increased the number of weather disasters in the US. They have become more frequent and more violent. A few types of weather catastrophes make up the majority of these in terms of both economic cost and the number of human lives lost.
*Climate Change Data
*Tornadoes Move To San Francisco
The federal government’s NOAA looked at catastrophes from 1980 to 2023. It then broke these into categories commonly used to identify weather events. All disasters over the period took 16,350 lives. The total damages hit $2.66 trillion.
The list was topped, based on cost, by tropical cyclones, which is another term for hurricanes. The total damage from these for the period was $1.38 trillion. A total of 6,897 people lost their lives because of them, which was at the top of the list as well.
From 2016 to 2018, six hurricanes (Matthew, Harvey, Irma, Maria, Florence, and Michael) did over $1 billion in damage. In total, they cost 3,318 lives. The sum of the damage of these six was $400 billion.
$445 Billion Storms
Severe storms were next on the list, with total damage at $455 billion. Total number of lives lost in these events were 2,094.
Next on the list was drought. The total cost of these was $352 billion. A total of 103. Most of these were due to the heat waves that accompanied them.
The math on the cost of these storms varies. Organizations like AccuWeather put the figures much higher because they include estimated future costs.
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