On this blog we most often talk about health care issues related to chronic and acute conditions, health behaviors and public health. However, there is another dimension that is vital to health: avoiding natural disasters. Unfortunately, natural disasters appear to having an increasing impact in the US across the past decades. Between 1980-2024, 16,941 people died due to natural disasters (376 per year; but 568 in 2024).
Not only is the health impact of natural disasters growing, but so is the economic toll they are imposing on the U.S. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information has a useful information which shows trends in natural disasters’ financial impact over time.
In 2024, there have been 27 confirmed U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events. These events include: seventeen severe storm events (tornado outbreaks, high wind, hailstorms) five tropical cyclones, one wildfire, one drought/heat wave and two winter storm/cold wave events. This follows 2023 in which there were a record 28 separate billion-dollar events. The total cost from these 27 events in 2024 was $182.7 billion. This is our current cost estimates as of January 10th and may rise by several billion dollars as new data become available. The total cost of the last ten years (2015-2024) exceeds $1.4 trillion while the costs for 403 events from 1980-2024 exceeds $2.915 trillion (inflation-adjusted to 2024 dollars).
Note that not all of the increase in cost is due to climate change. NOAA writes that:
A major driver of increased costs of extreme weather is the increase in population and material wealth over the last several decades…Additionally, much of the growth and property development has continued taken place in vulnerable areas like coasts, the wildland-urban interface, and river floodplains.
You can find out more statistics on natural disasters in the US on NOAA’s helpful website here.
