The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information have confirmed that 2023 has witnessed a staggering 24 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, making it the most eventful year in recorded history.
The most recent addition to this grim statistic was an event in September 2023, when a severe drought and heatwave struck portions of the Southern and Midwestern United States.
This event joins a list that includes 18 severe storms, two floods, one tropical cyclone, one winter storm, one wildfire, and another drought and heatwave, each resulting in economic losses exceeding $1 billion.
What’s even more alarming is that the first nine months of 2023 alone have seen more disasters than the entire years of 2017 and 2020, both of which witnessed 17 such events, the report noted.
The total economic cost of these 2023 disasters now exceeds a staggering $67.1 billion, and they have tragically claimed the lives of 373 individuals directly and indirectly.
This unsettling news comes in the backdrop of the United States experiencing 372 separate weather and climate disasters since 1980, all of which incurred damages or costs exceeding $1 billion when adjusted for inflation to 2023.
The cumulative cost of these 372 events has now surpassed a daunting $2.630 trillion.
