According to a NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) there has been an uptick in the costs of damage due to weather-related disasters around the United States.
During 2017, the U.S. experienced a historic year of weather and climate disasters. In total, the U.S. was impacted by 16 separate billion-dollar disaster events including: three tropical cyclones, eight severe storms, two inland floods, a crop freeze, drought and wildfire.
2017 ties 2011 for the highest number of billion-dollar disasters for a single year. 2017 arguably has more events than 2011 given that our analysis traditionally counts all U.S. billion-dollar wildfires, as regional-scale, seasonal events, not as multiple isolated events. In 2017, the U.S. experienced several wildfire episodes that each exceeded $1 billion in losses in central and southern California (i.e., the Tubbs, Atlas and Thomas Fires). The only other year - again, since 1980 - in which the U.S. experienced multiple, separate billion-dollar wildfires was 2003: the Cedar and Old Fires, also in California.
Perhaps more notably than the high frequency of these events is the cumulative cost, which exceeds $300 billion in 2017 - a new U.S. annual record (Munich Re 2016; Swiss Re 2016; NOAA 2017). The cumulative damage of these events is $306.2 billion, which shattered the previous U.S. annual record cost of $214.8 billion (CPI-adjusted) in 2005 due to the impacts of Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma. The damage from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria alone are responsible for approximately $265.0 billion of the $306.2 billion (NOAA 2017). Each of these destructive hurricanes now joins Katrina and Sandy, in the new top 5 costliest U.S. hurricanes on record.
It is not surprising as we have seen record high temperatures across the globe seemingly every year over the past couple of decades. Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and the California wildfires are just some of the very large and costly events we can all remember. But the flooding, severe local storms, winter storms, and wildfires across the country lead to a cascading loss of human lives, crops, infrastructure, with all of the rising costs associated there. And so while Republicans consider cuts from things like wintertime heat assistance, in the hopes of freeing up more money for the donor class, the facts are obvious to anyone paying attention. These costs aren’t an aberration. They are here to stay and only going to get worse over time.
Oceanographer Antonio Busalacchi says climate models predict more of the same. "The trend is there, it is clearly evident," says Busalacchi, "we are on an upward and warming slope." And it's a slope that increasingly worries not only scientists but insurance companies. He says insurance companies have a lot of questions about where the climate is headed. "Where is the risk in the future going to be from regional sea level rise?" he asks. "Where is the risk going to be for the increase in Category 3, 4 and 5 hurricanes? Where is the risk going to be for straight-line winds?"
Busalacchi runs the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. He says many scientists who work for him are taking on a new task: advising insurance companies on how to lower those risks as the climate keeps warming.
Big money in that insurance game. Unfortunately only the wealthiest will be able to afford it.