As A Likely New $1+ Billion Disaster Hits, U.S. Recovering From 28 Billion Dollar Disasters From 2023

A man makes his way through floodwaters surrounding a 
house in Richmond, Vermont on July 11, 2023. This
summer's floods in the Green Mountain State was
part of one of 28 weather and climate disasters
in the U.S. that cost at least $1 billion. 

The storm that pummeled the East Coast this week will very likely cause over $1 billion in damage.

It will be the first of probably many billion dollar disasters in 2024, at least if trends in recent years continue. 

In 2023, the United States endured 28 weather and  climate disaster, each of which caused at least $1 billion in damage, the National Centers for Environmental Information said Tuesday. 

The disasters included one drought, four floods, 10 severe storm events, one wildfire and one winter storm. 

The upward trend in such mega disasters in recent years is worrying. Says NCEI: "The 1980-2023 annual average is 8.5 events (CPI-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent five years (2019-202) is 20.4 events (CPI-adjusted)."

If there was a bright side, the big U.S. weather and climate disasters in 2023 were less expensive than in recent years, but still well above the average since 1980. Again, all these figures are inflation-adjusted. 

The 28 disasters billion dollar disasters in 2023 cost $92.9 billion, which makes it the ninth most expensive year since 1980. But that's still more than the inflation adjusted average since 1980, which is $60.5 billion

But 2023's financial tally was less than in either 2022 or 2021.  The big disasters of 2022 cost $178.7 billion. In 2021, the figure was $159.8 billion.

The most expensive year was 2017, with $383.7 billion in damage from the big weather and climate events.  That year included hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which made landfall in Texas and Florida, respectively, causing catastrophic damage. 

Here in Vermont, we participated - for lack of a better word -  in three of those disasters. One was the flooding and severe storms in the Northeast, especially Vermont, on July 9-15.  Another was the extensive Northeastern U.S. floods in December. The third was a sharp cold wave on Feb 3-4, which, frankly, caused little damage in the Green Mountain State. 

NCEI has data for Vermont specifically. It basically shows that we're tied with 2011 as the most expensive weather year on record in Vermont. However, I don't see evidence they included the December, 2023 floods in the data, so it appears this year is worse. 

I'm pretty sure I've said this before but it's worth repeating. This big huge increase in expensive weather disasters is in large part due to climate change, but it's definitely not the whole story.

Storms are in general getting bigger, stronger, more intense and destructive than they used to be thanks to climate change. There's no question about that. 

We also continue to put ourselves in harms way, which probably explains much of the spiraling costs of these weather and climate disasters.  I think human are hard-wired to prefer living near water. Makes sense from an evolutionary stand point. We need water to survive, obviously. 

And we locate ourselves near oceans, which are obvious ways to navigate, to trade, to encourage commerce, all that. 

Beach front homes and condos,  vacation property along rivers and lakes and waterfront businesses that keep popping up are all prone to big floods and storm surges. Now more than ever.  You'll notice some of the most expensive disasters in recent years have been hurricanes and floods. 

I suspect municipalities don't really want to discourage building in such disaster-prone areas because they don't want to forfeit the tax revenue. It's short term thinking without considering long term losses.

So, as climate change intensifies and we keep building and rebuilding in flood prone areas, many of these disasters will keep happening, and escalating. 

 

2022 Was A Bad Disaster Year Across The Globe. More Data Is In

Destruction from Hurricane Ian in Florida in 
September, 2022. It was the world's most expensive
weather and climate related disaster of last year.

 The world was beset by around weather-related disasters in 2022 that caused well over $300 billion in damage, according to insurance analysts. 

The actual numbers depend on the analyst, each of which has different methods of establishing losses. 

As Jeff Masters in Yale Climate Connections writes, the insurance broker Gallagher Re counted 42 disasters costing $360 billion, with 39 percent of that being insured losses. 

Meanwhile, another insurance broker, Aon, says there were 37 weather related disasters in 2022 with a total economic loss of $313 billion. That's 4 percent above the inflation adjusted average for the 21st century so far. 

Insurers are seeing a distinct upward trend in the inflation-adjusted cost of disasters since about 1990 and that trend has accelerated in the past decade or so. 

As the insurance analysts note, it's difficult to tease apart what proportion of the disaster losses are brought on by climate change and which part of the problem is created by increases in wealth and exposure to potential disasters. 

Hurricane Ian in Florida during late September is an excellent case in point. It caused roughly a third of the insured and economic losses in the 2022 list of billion dollar disasters.

Climate change might have helped the hurricane reach the high intensity it reached. But the storm hit parts of Florida that have seen intense coastal development, despite the risk of destructive hurricanes with or without climate change. 

The year saw three so-called "mega disasters" defined as a calamity causing ay least $20 billion in damage. The three in 2022 were Hurricane Ian, a drought in the United States (about $21 billion in losses) and another drought in Europe (about $25 billion)

DEATHS

Heat waves tend to be the most deadly type of weather disaster. You wouldn't think so watching the news, because heat waves are simply not that photogenic. Heat waves are sort of the neutron bomb of weather calamities. Buildings, trees, and other property emerge from heat waves largely unscathed, but the human cost is immense.

This was true in 2022. The deadliest disaster last year was extreme heat waves in Europe, which caused about 40,000 direct and indirect deaths, according to a Gallagher Re analysis of country-level excess mortality statistics, as reported by Masters in Yale Climate Connections.  

In terms of direct deaths alone, the worst 2022 disasters were monsoons in India, with 2,047 fatalities and other monsoons in Pakistan, responsible for 1,735 deaths.  

Three African nations, Nigeria, South Africa and Somalia, had their costliest disaster on record in 2022. Nigeria suffered $4.2 billion in damage fro flooding; another flood in South Africa caused $3.5 billion in losses. 

Drought in Somalia that started in 2021 and continued well into 2022 caused $1.1 billion in damage. The figures are adjusted for inflation.  

NOAA Says Was Disaster Prone, Drought Prone, And Warm And Dry During 2022

Almost all of the nation was either warmer than normal or
much warmer than normal for 2022 as a whole. Only six
Midwestern states were near normal, and none 
were cooler than average. 

 NOAA has finished crunching the weather and climate numbers in the Lower 48 of the United States for 2022 and, to nobody's surprise, it was a warm, dry year. 

The warmth did not set any records for the nation as a whole. The average annual temperature for 2022 in the Lower 48 was 53.4 degrees, or 1.4 degrees above the 20th century average. That would put last year among the warmest third of the 128 year record.

An average temperature or 1.4 degrees above normal might not seem like much, but it's fairly substantial for the entirety of a year over such a large chunk of real estate. 

Six states had one of their top 10 warmest years in 2022. Vermont wasn't quite in that list, having had its 11th warmest year on record. However, within Vermont, Burlington did have its 5th warmest year on record. 

On average, precipitation in the contiguous U.S. totaled 28.35, according to NOAA. That's 1.59 inches below average and among the driest third of the 128 years people have been keeping track of this sort of thing. 

Over the course of 2022, drought covered between 44 and 63 percent of the nation, the most extensive drought in a decade.

The United States experienced 18 weather and climate disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage. The only one of those disaster that affected us here in Vermont was the broad ranging winter storm the swept most of the nation on December 21-26.

Total damage from these 18 disasters amounted to $165 billion.  It was the third most costly weather year in the United States, behind 2017 and 2005 in inflation-adjusted dollars.  

Hurricane Ian made up the bulk of the destruction, with $119 billion in damage. It was the third costliest hurricane in the U.S. since at least 1980.

I'll also note that in this young year of 2023, I suspect we already have one billion dollar disaster with the storms this month in California. 

The United States had a slightly above average year for tornadoes, with a grand total of 1,331 twisters reported. March was especially busy, with 293 tornadoes reported, the  most in any year since at least 1950.