NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is most well known for the National Weather Service, providing forecasting that underpins local meteorological reports and major sites like AccuWeather. But the data that NOAA collects is also crucial for private-sector industries, from airlines to insurance.
The Trump administration is threatening this agency, and began slashing jobs there on Thursday. That means those other industries are also at risk. When it comes to insurance, climate change already causes billions of dollars in losses globally. Here in the U.S. people who live in areas especially prone to climate risks are seeing their rates skyrocket, or they’re seeing insurance carriers withdraw coverage in high-risk states. Without NOAA data, these trends could worsen, and leave even more Americans with higher insurance premiums—or without coverage at all.
“Financial services, including home insurance providers, consistently rely on [NOAA] to comprehend the influence of climate and weather on the economy and to facilitate transactions,” says Manogna Vangari, an insurance analyst at GlobalData. Specifically, insurance providers get data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), which recently revealed that in 2024, the U.S. experienced 27 individual weather and climate disasters causing at least $1 billion in damages each. In total, 2024 saw more than $192 billion in disaster costs, and more than 560 direct or indirect fatalities.
NCEI data helps insurers assess risks, and determine premiums. Insurers use this data to develop their catastrophe models, which estimate the economic losses from extreme weather events like hurricanes and floods; that then underpins premiums, underwriting, claims, and more. Insurers also look at data sets on storm report categories by state, as well as databases on specific disaster types such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis.
Losing that data, Vangari says, would complicate the way home insurance companies price climate-related risks. It also would hinder their ability to accurately model out the risk of extreme weather events, like wildfires and hurricanes, “and to price climate risk with greater precision.” Without knowing those climate risks, insurance companies themselves risk more financial losses. To make up for that uncertainty, they’ll need to raise premiums even more, or they might just choose to pull out of particularly risky areas. The cost of losing that accurate, reliable data would then fall on consumers.
Insurance companies also use NOAA retrospective analysis of weather effects to verify claims—like how bad a hailstorm really was, says Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA administrator from 2021 until January of this year. The insurance industry, as well as the reinsurance industry (which provides insurance for other insurance companies) has had an informal partnership with NOAA for 20 years. Spinrad formalized that partnership with a 2024 memorandum of understanding with the Reinsurance Association of America, an agreement meant to improve risk communication. NOAA has also worked with the insurance industry through its Industry Proving Ground, an initiative to test tailored services for the private sector, and to make sure the agency provides the best data for businesses to be most effective.
Because NOAA is a government service funded by taxpayers, its data is free. That means everyone has access to crucial weather forecasts. Project 2025, the conservative playbook that the Trump administration is following, advocates privatizing this service. But experts have said that even private weather companies wouldn’t want that, because then they’d have to bear the cost of collecting the data that the government currently provides.
If, instead, this data were accessible only to those who could afford it, that would particularly impact homeowners in vulnerable communities, Vangari says. “Insurers might be hesitant to pay a fee and rely on some other alternative source without access to reliable data,” she adds. “This would lead to a disproportionate increase in insurance premiums. Additionally, insurers may refuse to provide coverage in high-risk areas.”
That doesn’t just impact people who may lose their homes and need to rebuild. Broadly, the stakes of losing this data are serious: In places that are susceptible to climate impacts like tornadoes or floods or tsunamis along the coast, timely access to weather data can be a matter of life and death. Not having the data doesn’t stop climate impacts from happening, multiple experts have noted—it just makes us less prepared.
Some private companies are starting to invest in their own weather satellites. But completely replicating NOAA’s instrumental fleet and weather coverage—which includes operating 18 satellites, launching weather balloons from nearly 100 locations twice every day, and deploying more than 1,300 buoys—would require an enormous amount of money.
What NOAA is able to provide for free, Vangari says, is “a public good. . . . Its services offer safety and security universally, not merely to those who can afford them.”
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