2023 has already broken the US record for billion-dollar climate disasters
Four months before the close of 2023, the United States has already broken its record for the number of weather and climate disasters with damages exceeding $ 1 billion in a calendar year.
There have been 23 “billion-dollar disasters” to date this year, according to a monthly report issued Monday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, or NOAA. The last calendar-year record was set in 2020, with 22 disasters costing $ 1 billion. (NOAA adjusts its count of past years’ billion-dollar disasters to account for inflation.) This year’s 23 disasters have cost Americans a total of nearly $ 58 billion and caused at least 253 deaths.
The events include Hurricane Idalia, the strongest hurricane to hit Florida’s Big Bend region in 125 years, and the Lahaina fire storm, the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more …