Better weather forecasts key to battling billion-dollar disasters, experts tell House panel

Experts told representatives Wednesday that supporting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to improve weather models and predictions is crucial to saving lives and lowering recovery costs.

The U.S. was hit by 28 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2023, making the costs related to helping communities recover from natural disasters the highest on record, according to NOAA.

Chair Max Miller (R-Ohio) told the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s Environment Subcommittee that natural disasters impact a wide variety of people and businesses, from farmers in Ohio to large manufacturing plants.

“It’s easy to see that weather data doesn’t just help determine the day’s clothing,” Miller said. “It enhances our national economy and security by assisting long term decisionmaking. There are serious economic and humanitarian implications to not being able to predict weather correctly or precisely, and we cannot afford to let the United States fall behind on the world stage.”

The U.S. has a unique challenge in predicting weather. Its weather events are more varied, frequent and intense than that of any other nation, according to Scott Weaver, CEO of CLIMET Consulting.

The U.S. has experienced more than 8,000 deaths and $2.5 trillion in economic losses from extreme weather events since 1980, with $1 trillion of those losses coming from the last seven years. While the wide range of issues can make prediction efforts difficult, the U.S. can still do more to improve, Weaver said.

The U.S. has the opportunity to be the global leader in meteorological science and services, but to do that requires “coordinating a thriving research and applications enterprise to finally begin to bend the curve in the nation’s annual weather disaster losses,” Weaver said.

Congress could help this effort by not tacking on new responsibilities that fail to add value to NOAA and by following a budgeting process, allowing the agency to plan a time-constrained annual budget, said Kevin Petty, CEO of Aeris.

For NOAA’s part, the agency should create a clear and concise weather forecast improvement strategy, evaluate its current structure, consider building an independent team for modeling and develop more partnerships in the private sector, the science and technology innovation company head suggested.

Factors like a changing climate and population growth make it essential that NOAA lean on outside companies to achieve its goals in observing, computing, modeling and delivering information about the weather, Petty told the committee.

Ranking member Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) said that as extreme weather worsens, it is crucial to ensure people are appropriately informed.

“The dangers and damage associated with severe storms cannot be stopped entirely, but they can be mitigated, including by providing the impacted communities with appropriate warnings,” Ross said. “The integration of timely, accurate weather information with effective and accessible communication is essential to our goal of protecting American lives and property.”