A climate nonprofit plans to revive a key federal database tracking billion-dollar weather and climate disasters that the Trump Administration stopped updating in May, Bloomberg reported.
The database captures the financial toll of increasingly intense weather events and was used by insurers and others to understand, model, and predict weather perils across the United States. Dr. Adam B. Smith, the former NOAA climatologist who spearheaded the database for more than a decade, has been hired to manage it for the nonprofit, Climate Central.
NOAA in May announced it would stop tracking the cost of the country’s most expensive disasters, those which cause at least $1 billion in damage – a move that would leave insurers, researchers, and government policymakers with less reliable information to help understand the patterns of major disasters like hurricanes, drought or wildfires, and their economic consequences.
Climate Central plans to expand beyond the database’s original scope by tracking disasters as small as $100 million and calculating losses from individual wildfires, rather than simply reporting seasonal regional totals.
A record 28 billion-dollar disasters hit the United States in 2023, including a drought that caused $14.8 billion in damages. In 2024, 27 incidents of that scale occurred. Since 1980, an average of nine such events have struck in the United States annually.
This summer – amid deadly wildfires and floods – the Trump Administration has appeared to be rolling back some of its DOGE-driven NOAA funding cuts. NOAA recently announced that it would be hiring 450 meteorologists, hydrologists, and radar technicians for the National Weather Service (NWS), after having terminated over 550 such positions in the already-understaffed agency in the spring.
In addition, the administration’s announced termination of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program — run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — has been held up by a court injunction while legislators debate its future. Congress established BRIC through the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 to ensure a stable funding source to support mitigation projects annually. The program has allocated more than $5 billion for investment in mitigation projects to alleviate human suffering and avoid economic losses from floods, wildfires, and other disasters.
Regarding the rescue of the NOAA dataset, Colorado State University researcher and Triple-I non-resident scholar Dr. Phil Klotzbach said, “The billion-dollar disaster dataset is important for those of us working to better understand the impacts of tropical cyclones. It uses a consistent methodology to estimate damage caused by natural disasters from 1980 to the present and was a critical input to our papers investigating the relationship between landfalling wind, pressure and damage. I’m very happy to hear that this dataset will continue!”
Amid a summer full of deadly fires and storm-related flooding, the Trump Administration appears to be rolling back some of the spending cuts imposed upon the National Weather Service (NWS) by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – of which NWS is a part – announced at an internal all-hands meeting earlier this month that they will hire 450 meteorologists, hydrologists, and radar technicians. CNN reported the announcement, citing an unnamed NOAA official. In jointly timed press releases, Congressmen Mike Flood and Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.) and Mike Flood (R-Neb.) acknowledged the planned hirings.
While the decision is welcome news, both congressmen continued to urge their colleagues to pass their bipartisan Weather Workforce Improvement Act to ensure these positions will remain permanent and not be subject to any future reductions.
“For months, Congressman Flood and I have been fighting to get NOAA and NWS employees the support they need in the face of cuts to staff and funding,” Sorenson said. “Hundreds of unfilled positions have caused NWS offices across the country to cancel weather balloon launches, forgo overnight staffing, and force remaining meteorologists to overwork themselves.”
“For decades the National Weather Service has helped keep our communities safe with accurate and timely forecasts,” said Flood, adding that the NOAA announcement “sends a message that they’re focused on strengthening the NWS for years to come.”
NOAA and FEMA cuts raised fears
It’s not just the NOAA and NWS cuts that have raised concerns. On April 4, 2025, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced that it would be ending its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program and cancel all BRIC applications from fiscal years 2020-2023. Congress established BRIC through the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 to ensure a stable funding source to support mitigation projects annually. The program has allocated more than $5 billion for investment in mitigation projects to alleviate human suffering and avoid economic losses from floods, wildfires, and other disasters.
At the time, Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), called the decision to terminate BRIC “beyond reckless.”
“Although ASFPM has had some qualms about how FEMA’s BRIC program was implemented, it was still a cornerstone of our nation’s hazard mitigation strategy, and the agency has worked to make improvements each year,” Berginnis said. “Eliminating it entirely — mid-award cycle, no less — defies common sense.”
Resilience investment is key to long-term insurance availability and affordability. Average insured catastrophe losses have been on the rise for decades, reflecting a combination of climate-related factors and demographic trends as more people have moved into harm’s way.
Efforts have been made to save BRIC, and a U.S. District Judge in Boston recently granted a preliminary injunction sought by 20 Democrat-led states while their lawsuit over the funding moves ahead. Judge Richard G. Stearns ruled the Trump Administration cannot reallocate $4 billion meant to help communities protect against natural disasters.
In his ruling, Stearns said he was not convinced Congress had given FEMA any discretion to redirect the funds. The states had also shown that the “balance of hardship and public interest” was in their favor.
“There is an inherent public interest in ensuring that the government follows the law, and the potential hardship accruing to the States from the funds being repurposed is great,” Stearns wrote. “The BRIC program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives.”
Global insured losses from natural catastrophes reached $80 billion in the first six months of 2025 alone, making it the second-costliest first half on record since data collection began decades ago, according to reports by reinsurance giants Munich Re and Swiss Re.
Both reports called out the devastating wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County in January as the single most destructive event to date, with both firms estimating that these fires caused $40 billion in insured losses.
What makes these disasters particularly alarming is their timing and location. Both reports emphasized that the Los Angeles fires occurred during California’s normally wet winter season, when such massive blazes are typically unheard of. This seasonal shift represents a troubling new pattern, in which dangerous fire conditions persist year-round, rather than just during traditional fire season.
The reports also agree that severe thunderstorms across the American Midwest and South continued to cause billions in additional damage throughout spring, reinforcing how weather-related disasters are becoming both more frequent and more costly as communities expand into high-risk areas.
Swiss Re and Munich Re both identify the same underlying drivers making these disasters so expensive: More people are building homes and businesses in dangerous areas like wildfire-prone zones and tornado alleys, while climate change is making extreme weather events more intense and unpredictable.
The reports agree that this combination of increased development in risky locations and worsening weather conditions means that what happened in the first half of 2025 is likely just a preview of even costlier disasters to come, unless communities take serious steps to build more resilient infrastructure and avoid construction in the most hazardous areas.
Cat losses and replacement costs
Swiss Re emphasized the growing wildfire threat, pointing out that, before 2015, wildfires on average contributed around 1 percent of the total insured losses from all natural catastrophes worldwide.
“In the last 10 years, this has risen to 7 percent, the costliest periods being a two-year stretch of 2017‒18, and to a lesser extent 2020,” the report said.
Swiss Re also points to severe impact of post-pandemic construction cost inflation, noting that “construction costs rose by 35.64 percent from January 2020 to June 2025, directly impacting property claims costs.” These higher costs to repair and replace property significantly increase the financial impact of each disaster.
“The best way to avoid losses is to implement effective preventive measures, such as more robust construction for buildings and infrastructure to better withstand natural disasters,” said Thomas Blunck, a member of Munich Re’s Board of Management. “Such precautions can help to maintain reasonable insurance premiums, even in high-risk areas. And most importantly: to reduce future exposure, new building development should not be allowed in high-risk areas.”
Swiss Re cautions that climate change is creating more volatile and unpredictable loss patterns, making catastrophe losses “more difficult to predict.” Together, these trends suggest the U.S. insurance market must prepare for sustained pressure on pricing and availability, particularly in high-risk coastal and wildland-urban interface regions.
Colorado State University researchers are standing by their prediction for a “slightly above-average” 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, while warning of heightened tropical activity over the next two weeks.
Led by Dr. Phil Klotzbach, senior research scientist at CSU and Triple-I non-resident scholar, the team maintains their forecast of 16 named storms, eight hurricanes, and three major hurricanes through November 30. The forecast calls for 115 percent of average hurricane activity compared to the 1991-2020 baseline, a decrease from 2024’s 130 percent. However, the immediate outlook is more concerning, with a 55 percent chance of above-normal activity through August 19.
Current activity includes Tropical Storm Dexter, which formed off North Carolina on August 3 and may strengthen to Category 1 status as it moves into the Central Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center is also monitoring a new system labeled Invest 96L in the Eastern Atlantic. The term “invest” is a naming convention used by the National Hurricane Center to identify a system that could develop into a tropical depression or tropical storm within the next seven days. The designation allows the agency to run specialized computer forecast models to track the area’s potential storm development.
The heightened forecast stems from unusually warm tropical Atlantic waters.
“Weaker winds over the past few weeks have reduced evaporation and ocean mixing, leading to faster warming,” Klotzbach explained. These warmer waters provide more fuel for hurricane development and create atmospheric conditions that favor storm formation.
Major hurricane landfall probabilities remain elevated: 48 percent for the entire continental U.S. coastline, 24 percent for the East Coast, and 31 percent for the Gulf Coast — all above historical averages.
Devastating flooding in central Texas over the July 4, 2025, weekend highlighted several aspects of the state’s risk profile that also are relevant to the rest of the country, according to the latest Triple-I Issues Brief. One is the rising incidence of severe inland flooding related to tropical storms.
Tropical Storm Barry made landfall in Mexico on June 29 and weakened quickly, but its remnant moisture drifted northward into Texas, according to Dr. Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University and a Triple-I non-resident scholar.
“A slow-moving low-pressure area developed and helped bring up the moisture-rich air rom Barry and concentrated it over the Hill Country of central Texas,” Klotzbach said. “The soil was also extremely hard from prior drought conditions, which exacerbated the flash flooding that occurred.”
Such flooding far from landfall has become more frequent and severe in recent years. In Texas – as in much of the United States, particularly far from the coasts – few homeowners have flood insurance. Many believe flood damage is covered by their homeowners’ or renters’ insurance. Others believe the coverage is not worth buying if their mortgage lender doesn’t require it. In Kerr County, where much of the July 4 flooding took place, flood insurance take-up rates through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) were 2.5 percent.
Convective storms, fires, and freezes
But tropical storms aren’t always the impetus for flooding. In July 2023, a series of intense thunderstorms resulted in heavy rainfall, deadly flash floods, and severe river flooding in eastern Kentucky and central Appalachia. The conditions that lead to such severe convective storms also are prevalent in Texas.
Severe convective storms are a growing source of losses for property/casualty insurers. According to Gallagher Re, severe convective storm events in 2023 and 2024 “have cost global insurers a remarkable US$143 billion, of which US$120 billion occurred in the U.S. alone.”
Given its aridity and winds, it should be no surprise that Texas is highly subject to wildfire – but the state also has been increasingly prone to severe winter storms and debilitating freezes. On Valentine’s Day 2021, snow fell across most of Texas, accumulating as temperatures stayed below freezing and precipitation continued through the night. A catastrophic failure of the state’s independent electric grid exacerbated these conditions as snow and ice shut down roads and many homes suffered pipe bursts and multiple days without power.
Texas’s 2021 experience illustrates how grid instability can act as a “risk multiplier” for natural disasters. The entire U.S. electric power grid is increasingly vulnerable as the infrastructure ages and proliferating AI data centers increase demand.
Need for data and collaboration
The severe damage and loss of life from the July 4 flooding have naturally raised the question of whether the Trump Administration’s reductions in National Weather Service staffing contributed to the high human cost of this event. While it is hard to say with certainty, these cuts have affected how NWS works – for example, in its use of weather balloons to monitor weather. As early as April, staffing data gathered by NWS indicated that field offices were “critically understaffed”.
In June, panelists at Triple-I’s Joint Industry Forum expressed concern about the impact of the federal cuts on weather monitoring and modeling, as well as programs to help communities adequately prepare for and recover from disasters. Triple-I has published extensively on the need for insurers to shift from exclusively focusing on repairing and replacing property to predicting events and preventing damage.
Collective action at all levels – individual, commercial, and government – is needed to mitigate risks, build resilience, and reduce fraud and legal system abuse. Triple-I and its members are committed to fostering such action and regularly provide data and analysis to inform the necessary conversations.
Recent developments in the atmosphere over the Caribbean Sea have led researchers at Colorado State University (CSU) to make slight improvements to their hurricane forecast for the 2025 Atlantic-basin season, in an update published Wednesday.
Triple-I non-resident scholar Phil Klotzbach, Ph.D., a senior research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU, and the CSU TC-RAMS research team are now predicting 16 total named storms through the end of the year, a small drop from their original forecast of 17.
“The primary reason for the slight decrease in our outlook is both observed and predicted high levels of Caribbean wind shear,” Klotzbach said. “High levels of Caribbean shear in June and July are typically associated with less active hurricane seasons.”
Klotzbach warned, however, that peak hurricane season – which typically occurs from mid-August through late October – could still be very active, despite current atmospheric conditions.
“The subtropical eastern Atlantic and portions of the tropical Atlantic are warmer than normal,” he said. “The current Atlantic sea surface temperature pattern is fairly similar to what we typically observe in July prior to active Atlantic hurricane seasons.”
Established by Congress through the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018, the BRIC program has allocated more than $5 billion for investment in mitigation projects to reduce economic losses from floods, wildfires, and other disasters for hundreds of communities. Ending BRIC will cancel all applications from 2020-2023 and rescind more than $185 million in grants intended for Louisiana, leaving the 34 submitted and accepted projects funded by those grants in limbo.
Whereas the FEMA press release described BRIC as “wasteful and ineffective,” Cassidy identified “not doing the program and then having to rescue communities when the inevitable flood occurs – that is waste, because we could have prevented that from happening in the first place.”
A 2024 study backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports this claim, which found that disaster mitigation investments save $13 in benefits for every dollar spent.
FEMA’s decision coincides with recovery efforts in Natchitoches, a small Louisiana city, after flash flooding inundated homes and downed power lines just weeks before. BRIC was set to fund improvements to the city’s backup generator system to pump out floodwater during severe weather.
Similarly, Lafourche Parish will lose $20 million to strengthen 16 miles of power lines, which Cassidy noted toppled “like dominos” during last year’s Hurricane Francine. Jefferson Parish residents displaced following Hurricane Ida in 2021 will lose the home elevation disaster grants they finally secured earlier this year.
“Louisiana was the third-largest recipient of BRIC’s most recent round of funding and is the largest recipient on a per capita basis,” Cassidy said. “Without BRIC, none of these projects would be possible.”
A national problem
Beyond Louisiana, Cassidy pointed to numerous states ravaged by severe storms so far this year, particularly inland communities where flooding is traditionally unexpected. At least 25 people died amid a severe weather outbreak across the southern and midwestern U.S. last month, underscoring a growing need for resiliency planning in non-coastal areas.
BRIC is one of many programs facing sudden termination under the Trump Administration. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit demanding the federal government unfreeze essential funding, including BRIC grants. Though the administration is reportedly complying with a federal judge’s order blocking the freeze, the states involved claim funding remains inaccessible.
Louisiana has not joined the lawsuit, but Cassidy emphasized the congressional appropriation of the program and requested the fulfillment of preexisting BRIC applications. He argued that “to do anything other than use that money to fund flood mitigation projects is to thwart the will of Congress.”
As President Trump weighs disbanding FEMA entirely – even as FEMA responds to record-breaking numbers of billion-dollar disasters – it is imperative to recognize the vast co-beneficiary benefits of disaster resilience, and develop our partnerships across these stakeholder groups.
New, alarming financial risks for homebuyers who are unaware of property flood histories has driven several states to implement new disclosure laws, helping protect consumers from unexpected costs after purchasing flood-prone homes, according to new research from Milliman.
Atmospheric conditions are intensifying flood risks across the U.S., with severe storms and rain events becoming more devastating and frequent. Despite this escalating threat, a significant regulatory gap has persisted: many states haven’t required home sellers to disclose previous flooding to potential buyers.
This omission creates a dangerous scenario where unsuspecting homebuyers invest their savings in properties with undisclosed flood histories.
As Joel Scata, senior attorney in the climate adaptation division at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), explains, “If a buyer doesn’t know the house is flood-prone, they don’t know they need to buy flood insurance. They don’t know they need to mitigate that risk, and that they could be in a really bad situation when the next flood happens.”
The issue became impossible to ignore in 2018 when Hurricane Florence inundated more than 74,000 buildings in North Carolina. At that time, sellers weren’t required to inform buyers about previous flooding, meaning hurricane-damaged homes could be cleaned up and sold without disclosure of this critical history. Since properties that have flooded once are likely to flood again, this lack of transparency created significant financial vulnerability for new homeowners, according to Milliman.
Quantifying the Financial Impact
To drive policy change, NRDC needed hard data quantifying the financial risks to homebuyers. They partnered with Milliman, where Larry Baeder, a senior data scientist, co-authored a study titled, “Estimating undisclosed flood risk in real estate transactions.”
Using catastrophe models, proprietary datasets, real estate transaction data, historical flood events and demographic patterns, Baeder analyzed the impact in three states with low marks on NRDC’s Flood Risk Disclosure Laws Scorecard: North Carolina, New York and New Jersey.
The findings revealed staggering financial disparities. In North Carolina, a home without flood history might face an average annual loss (AAL) of about $60. In contrast, a flood-prone property’s AAL jumped to approximately $1,200 — 20 times higher — and could exceed $2,000 based on future flood projections. Over 15 years, previously flooded North Carolina properties might require more than $18,000 in repairs.
The numbers were even more concerning in the Northeast. In New York, flood history could increase a property’s AAL from about $100 to $3,000. A previously flooded New Jersey home might incur $25,000 in damages over a 15-year period.
“These are big numbers, and they’re a scary reality that people are going to have to deal with,” Baeder noted. “If a homebuyer is taking on this risk, they should be aware of the risk.” Milliman’s research also found that more than 6% of all homes sold across these three states in 2021 had a record of flooding—with no requirement to warn new owners about this history.
Data-Driven Legislative Change
Armed with Milliman’s analysis, NRDC approached lawmakers with compelling evidence of the problem’s scale and impact.
“Before the report, I think legislators knew that people struggled to rebuild after a flood,” Scata said, “but I don’t think they realized just how much it costs a homeowner. These numbers helped lawmakers see this was a big problem, that their constituents were suffering, and that they should do something about it.”
The data-driven approach proved effective. In 2023, New Jersey began legally requiring sellers to disclose a property’s flood history. North Carolina and New York soon followed, with New York enacting disclosure requirements at the end of 2023 and North Carolina amending mandatory forms in 2024.
The impact extended beyond these three states. Four additional states — Florida, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont — independently adopted disclosure requirements in 2024 after recognizing the need demonstrated elsewhere.
“The laws show the power of data,” Scata noted. “Having Milliman do this work was really important for showing the actual impacts of flood damage on homeowners and effecting change through the legislatures.”
The momentum continues as Baeder now leads a follow-up study for NRDC expanding the research to 25 additional states with insufficient disclosure laws. Scata hopes to eventually see strong disclosure requirements nationwide, providing all homebuyers and renters with insight into their flood risk.
“If we’re going to tell people about lead-based paint,” Scata concludes, referring to other widespread real estate disclosures, “if we’re going to tell people about asbestos, we should probably tell people about flooding, because flooding has such an impact on someone’s finances and health.”
The Trump Administration’s unwinding of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program and cancellation of all BRIC applications from fiscal years 2020-2023 reinforce the need for collaboration among state and local government and private-sector stakeholders in climate resilience investment.
Congress established BRIC through the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 to ensure a stable funding source to support mitigation projects annually. The program has allocated more than $5 billion for investment in mitigation projects to alleviate human suffering and avoid economic losses from floods, wildfires, and other disasters. FEMA announced on April 4 that it is ending BRIC .
Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), called the decision “beyond reckless.”
“Although ASFPM has had some qualms about how FEMA’s BRIC program was implemented, it was still a cornerstone of our nation’s hazard mitigation strategy, and the agency has worked to make improvements each year,” Berginnis said. “Eliminating it entirely — mid-award cycle, no less — defies common sense.”
While the FEMA press release called BRIC a “wasteful, politicized grant program,” Berginnis said investments in hazard mitigation programs “are the opposite of ‘wasteful.’ “ He pointed to a study by the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) that showed flood hazard mitigation investments return up to $8 in benefits for every $1 spent.
“At this very moment, when states like Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee are grappling with major flooding, the Administration’s decision to walk away from BRIC is hard to understand,” Berginnis said.
Heading into hurricane season
Especially hard hit will be catastrophe-prone Florida. Nearly $300 million in federal aid meant to help protect communities from flooding, hurricanes, and other natural disasters has been frozen since President Trump took office in January, according to an article in Government Technology.
The loss of BRIC funding leaves dozens of Florida projects in limbo, from a plan to raise roads in St. Augustine to a $150 million effort to strengthen canals in South Florida. According to Government Technology, the agency most impacted is the South Florida Water Management District, responsible for maintaining water quality, controlling the water supply, ecosystem restoration and flood control in a 16-county area that runs from Orlando south to the Keys.
“The district received only $6 million of its $150 million grant before the program was canceled,” the article said. “The money was intended to help build three structures on canals and basins in North Miami -Dade and Broward counties to improve flood mitigation.”
Florida’s Division of Emergency Management must return $36.9 million in BRIC money that was earmarked for management costs and technical assistance. Jacksonville will lose $24.9 million targeted to raise roads and make improvements to a water reclamation facility.
FEMA announced the decision to end BRIC the day after Colorado State University’s (CSU) Department of Atmospheric Science released a forecast projecting an above-average Atlantic hurricane season for 2025. Led by CSU senior research scientist and Triple-I non-resident scholar Phil Klotzbach CSU research team forecasts 17 named storms, nine hurricanes – four of them “major” (Category 3, 4, or 5). A typical season has 14 named storms, seven hurricanes – three of them major.
Nationwide impacts
More than $280 million in federal funding for flood protection and climate resilience projects across New York City — “including critical upgrades in Central Harlem, East Elmhurst, and the South Street Seaport” – is now at risk, according to an article in AMNY. The cuts affect over $325 million in pending projects statewide and another $56 million of projects where work has already begun.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Gov. Kathy Hochul warned that the move jeopardizes public safety as climate-driven disasters become more frequent and severe.
“In the last few years, New Yorkers have faced hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, wildfires, and even an earthquake – and FEMA assistance has been critical to help us rebuild,” Hochul said. “Cutting funding for communities across New York is short-sighted and a massive risk to public safety.”
According to the National Association of Counties, cancellation of BRIC funding has several implications for counties, including paused or canceled projects, budget and planning adjustments, and reduced capacity for long-term risk reduction.
North Dakota, for example, has 10 projects that were authorized for federal funding. Those dollars will now be rescinded. Impacted projects include $7.1 million for a water intake project in Washburn; $7.8 million for a regional wastewater treatment project in Lincoln; and $1.9 million for a wastewater lagoon project in Fessenden.
“This is devastating for our community,” said Tammy Roehrich, emergency manager for Wells County. “Two million dollars to a little community of 450 people is huge.”
The cancellation of BRIC roughly coincides with FEMA’s decision to deny North Carolina’s request to continue matching 100 percent of the state’s spending on Hurricane Helene recovery.
“The need in western North Carolina remains immense — people need debris removed, homes rebuilt, and roads restored,” said Gov. Josh Stein. “Six months later, the people of western North Carolina are working hard to get back on their feet; they need FEMA to help them get the job done.”
Resilience key to insurance availability
Average insured catastrophe losses have been on the rise for decades, reflecting a combination of climate-related factors and demographic trends as more people have moved into harm’s way.
“Investing in the resilience of homes, businesses, and communities is the most proactive strategy to reducing the damage caused by climate,” said Triple-I Chief Insurance Officer Dale Porfilio. “Defunding federal resilience grants will slow the essential investments being made by communities across the U.S.”
Flood is a particularly pressing problem, as 90 percent of natural disasters involve flooding, according to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in 2024 across a 500-mile swath of the U.S. Southeast – including Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee – highlighted the growing vulnerability of inland areas to flooding from both tropical and severe convective storms, as well as the scale of the flood-protection gap in non-coastal areas.
Coastal flooding in the U.S. now occurs three times more frequently than 30 years ago, and this acceleration shows no signs of slowing, according to recent research. By 2050, flood frequency is projected to increase tenfold compared to current levels, driven by rising sea levels that push tides and storm surges higher and further inland.
In addition to the movement of more people and property into harm’s way, climate-related risks are exacerbated by inflation (which drives up the cost of repairing and replacing damaged property); legal system abuse, (which delays claim settlements and drives up insurance premium rates); and antiquated regulations (like California’s Proposition 103) that discourage insurers from writing business in the states subject to them.
Thanks to the engagement and collaboration of a range of stakeholders, some of these factors in some states are being addressed. Others – for example, improved building and zoning codes that could help reduce losses and improve insurance affordability – have met persistent local resistance.
As frequently reported on this blog, the property/casualty insurance industry has been working hard with governments, communities, businesses, and others to address the causes of high costs and the insurance affordability and availability challenges that flow from them. Triple-I, its members, and partners are involved in several of these efforts, which we’ll be reporting on here as they progress.
Approximately 2.5 million Americans in 1.4 million homes will be at risk from severe coastal flooding by 2050, with Florida, New York, and New Jersey facing the highest exposure, according to a new report from Climate Central’s Coastal Risk Finder.
Coastal flooding in the U.S. now occurs three times more frequently than 30 years ago, and this acceleration shows no signs of slowing. By 2050, flood frequency is projected to increase tenfold compared to current levels, driven by rising sea levels that push tides and storm surges higher and further inland, according to the report.
The report defines a “severe flood” as one with a 1% chance of occurring in any given year. Such events, while statistically rare, can cause catastrophic damage to communities and infrastructure. The analysis incorporates the latest elevation data, levee information, sea level rise projections, and U.S. Census statistics to create comprehensive risk assessments.
Regional differences in risk exposure are significant. While the densely populated Northeast shows higher numbers of at-risk residents, the Gulf region faces greater land area vulnerability due to higher rates of sea level rise and naturally low-lying coasts.
Vulnerable Communities and Populations
Florida leads the nation with 505,000 residents projected to face risk from a severe coastal flood by 2050, followed by New York and New Jersey. At the municipal level, New York City tops the list with an estimated 271,000 people living in “high” at-risk areas. Among the cities with the highest exposure, six are located in the Northeast.
The report also highlighted a troubling demographic pattern: older adults face disproportionate exposure to coastal flood risks. Nearly 540,000 people aged 65 or older live in areas at risk of severe coastal flooding by 2050, representing 22% of the total at-risk population despite comprising only 16% of residents in coastal states. Florida has the highest number of vulnerable seniors with more than 143,000 at risk, while Maine, Oregon, and Delaware show the highest proportions of seniors living in flood-prone areas.
Social vulnerability—the combination of socioeconomic factors that worsen disaster impacts—further complicates the risk landscape. The report utilizes the U.S. Census Bureau’s Community Resilience Estimates to identify individuals with various risk components. Of the 2.5 million Americans in flood-risk zones, approximately 1.85 million (74%) have at least one component of risk, and 617,000 (25%) have three or more risk factors.
“Older adults, especially those living in care facilities, are among the most vulnerable to death and health setbacks due to hurricanes, storm surges, and other floods,” the report noted, emphasizing that age is just one of many factors contributing to vulnerability.
Tools and Adaptation Imperatives
The Coastal Risk Finder tool, which informed this report, offers detailed flood projections and risk assessments for any coastal state, county, city, town or district in the contiguous U.S. Developed following interviews with over 100 government officials, community leaders and researchers, the tool addresses the specific information needs of coastal communities.
Users can access customized maps, graphics and data to understand flood risks under different climate scenarios. The tool includes specific resources for media professionals, government officials and community leaders to help communicate and plan for worsening coastal flood risks.
The full range of demographic data, including social vulnerability metrics, is available for states, counties and cities through the Coastal Risk Finder, enabling communities to develop more targeted and equitable resilience plans.
