{"id":243766,"date":"2025-10-22T14:57:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T14:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/243766\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T14:57:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T14:57:04","slug":"climate-disasters-in-first-half-of-2025-costliest-ever-on-record-research-shows-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/243766\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate disasters in first half of 2025 costliest ever on record, research shows | Climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first half of 2025 was the costliest on record for major disasters in the US, driven by huge wildfires in Los Angeles<\/a> and storms that battered much of the rest of the country, according to a climate non-profit that has resurrected work axed by Donald Trump\u2019s administration that tracked the biggest disasters.<\/p>\n

In the first six months of this year, 14 separate weather-related disasters that each caused at least $1bn in damage hit the US, the Climate Central<\/a> group has calculated. In total, these events cost $101bn in damages \u2013 lost homes, businesses, highways and other infrastructure \u2013 a toll higher than any other first half of a year since records on this began in 1980.<\/p>\n

The bulk of this toll was caused by the ferocious wildfires<\/a> that razed parts of Los Angeles in January, a disaster that destroyed about 16,000 buildings and resulted in the indirect deaths<\/a> of around 400 people. At $61bn in damages, the LA fires are one of the most expensive climate-related disasters on record in the US, and the only top 10 event that is not a hurricane.<\/p>\n

Two charts. Top bar chart shows how 13 severe storms and the Los Angeles fire drove 2025 to be the most expensive half year for billion-dollar climate disasters. Bottom bar chart places the fires as the most expensive event aside from hurricanes.<\/a><\/p>\n

The mounting cost of fires, storms, hurricanes, drought and floods \u2013 all worsened by the human-caused climate crisis \u2013 was charted over the previous 45 years by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), until the Trump administration \u201cretired<\/a>\u201d the dataset in May, citing \u201cevolving priorities, statutory mandates and staffing changes\u201d.<\/p>\n

Information on billion-dollar disasters until the end of 2024 is still available, frozen<\/a>, on Noaa\u2019s website, but Climate Central has sought to extend this work, citing its importance as a barometer of the climate crisis as well as a planning resource for cities and states facing increasing dangers from extreme weather impacts.<\/p>\n

Over the past four decades, such disasters have become far more savage. The cost of all disasters between 1985 and 1995 was $299bn, a figure dwarfed by the damages of the past decade \u2013 with $1.4tn in losses between 2014 and last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis dataset is simply too important to not be updated, we were getting requests from the private sector, local communities and academia for this information,\u201d said Adam Smith, who headed the billion-dollar disaster project at Noaa, before ending his 20-year spell at the agency in May amid a purge of the federal workforce by Trump.<\/p>\n

Smith, who has now revived this work at Climate Central, said the latest dataset was compiled using the same methodology as Noaa. \u201cWe are certainly seeing more of these big, costly events, since 2017 it\u2019s been on an entirely different level,\u201d he said. \u201cClimate change is supercharging the intensity and frequency of these extremes.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate Central is trying to step into the void of information to recover some of the lost expertise and tools that society needs access to. We are in a sort of triage situation where we are trying to save and continue as much as we can. We are doing the best we can to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bar chart shows the increase in costs of billion-dollar climate disasters from 1985-1995 to 2014-2024. Severe storms, tropical cyclones and wildfires have increased the most.<\/a><\/p>\n

The initial Climate Central update ends in June, meaning it doesn\u2019t capture July\u2019s deadly floods in Texas<\/a>, which killed more than 130 people, including young girls camping beside a river that burst its banks.<\/p>\n

Also, so far this year the US has not been hit by a major, destructive hurricane, meaning that 2025 is currently not on track to be among the most costly on record by year\u2019s end. The lack of hurricanes making landfall is fortunate, experts have said, particularly as the Trump administration has sought to dismantle the disaster response that Americans have come to take for granted.<\/p>\n

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has slashed staff numbers<\/a>, with Trump demanding<\/a> states, rather than the federal government, shoulder the fallout from major disasters.<\/p>\n

The agency has faced criticism over its leadership<\/a>, its sluggish response times<\/a> to disasters and for the politically motivated withholding of its funds \u2013 last week, a federal judge ruled<\/a> that Fema could not halt grants to Democratic-run states due to differences over immigration policies.<\/p>\n

This is a \u201ctremendous concern\u201d given the growing threat from disasters that are being worsened by the climate crisis, as well as population shifts to risky areas such as Florida and the failure to update infrastructure to cope with a warming world, according to Samantha Montano, an expert in emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo part of the country is being left unscathed, but unfortunately Fema has backslid to becoming a dysfunctional and ineffectual agency,\u201d Montano said. Improvements made to Fema since Hurricane Katrina<\/a> in 2005 have been wiped out under Trump, Montano added, leaving local and state agencies unsure of how to cope when disasters strike.<\/p>\n

\u201cFema has fired people who have unique expertise who can\u2019t just be hired back at five hours\u2019 notice, so even if the administration wanted to respond effectively to a disaster I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s possible for them to do so,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got extremely lucky we\u2019ve not had any bigger disasters than we\u2019ve already had this year. We are basically sitting ducks for when the next major disaster hits.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first half of 2025 was the costliest on record for major disasters in the US, driven by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-243766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}