Extreme Weather Events Cost the U.S. Economy $145 Billion in 2021

Regular Earther readers will know there was no scarcity of apocalyptic climate disasters plaguing the U.S. final yr, from pipe-bursting freezes in Texas to street warping warmth within the Pacific Northwest to an infinite parade of wildfires blended in for good measure. Now, a brand new report from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) offers some extra element on the financial and human prices related to the tragic mess that’s the altering local weather.

The company chronicled 20 climate occasions within the report, launched Monday, that collectively value the U.S. economic system at the least $145 billion {dollars}. Each of these local weather or climate occasions individually led to losses of at the least $1 billion. The report additionally estimates final yr’s excessive climate occasions led to the deaths of 688 throughout the U.S., exhibiting that we’re not going to have the ability to adapt our manner out of the more and more violent local weather.

Tropical storms had by far the biggest financial impression in 2021, inflicting $78.5 billion in harm. Of that, $74 billion alongside got here from Hurricane Ida, with the storm leaving a path of destruction from Louisiana to New York.

Winter storms adopted their tropical counterparts, inflicting $24 billion in harm. Severe storms and wildfires value the nation $20.4 billion and $10.6 billion respectively. The deadliest climate occasion of 2021 was the drought and sequence of warmth waves that rippled throughout the West, killing 229 over the course of the yr. (Though, it needs to be famous, different analyses have pegged the dying toll of the Pacific Northwest warmth wave alone as much higher. Ditto for the Texas cold snap.)

Those figures are made even worse when put in context with earlier years. The 20 climate occasions costing greater than $1 billion in 2021 far eclipsed the common of roughly seven comparable climate occasions yearly between 1980 and 2021. Of the 310 climate occasions topping $1 billion in harm recorded over the previous 41 years, 2021 alone accounted for over 15% of them.

In simply the previous 5 years, climate and local weather disasters value the U.S. economic system $742.1 billion and left some 4,519 folks useless. The staggering toll displays a couple of traits. One is an more and more violent local weather the place warmth waves are extra intense, hurricanes can do extra harm, and wildfires are extra voracious attributable to burning fossil fuels.

“Climate change is also playing a role in the increasing frequency of some types of extreme weather that lead to billion-dollar disasters,” the authors famous, “most notably the rise in vulnerability to drought, lengthening wildfire seasons in the Western states, and the potential for extremely heavy rainfall becoming more common in the eastern states.”

The different issue driving the harm tally is folks more and more residing in areas vulnerable to disasters. The inhabitants in coastal counties and in areas the place the woods meet cities often called the wildland-urban interface has ballooned. That mixture has put folks and infrastructure proper within the local weather bullseye—and all however ensured losses will proceed to skyrocket as local weather change worsens.