Extreme Temperature Diary- Friday October 24th, 2025/Main Topic: U.S. Climate Disasters in First Half of 2025 Costliest Ever on Record – Guy On Climate
(edit...the same is true for our political disaster)
Dear Diary. On Wednesday I announced the return of the billion-dollar disaster database via Climate Central. This is just for the United States. Meanwhile researchers are looking at climate disaster trends for the entire world, which I hope to post soon. Trends across the planet are not good as the world slips towards the +1.5°C above preindustrial threshold. In fact, for the first part of 2025 U.S. costs incurred from the climate crisis were at an all-time high according to new research. And all this without a landfalling hurricane.
Today, the U.S. faces one billion+ dollar climate/weather disaster on average every 2w. That's a massive increase from one every 4m in the 1980s.
This is 'global weirding' and people are taking notice!
The government told NOAA to stop tracking these events: but @climatecentral.org is on the job. — Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) 2025-10-22T16:11:07.754Z
Here are details from the Guardian:
Climate disasters in first half of 2025 costliest ever on record.
#climate
www.theguardian.com/environment/... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T11:17:43.506Z
For charts that I did not repost, hit the following link:
Climate disasters in first half of 2025 costliest ever on record, research shows | Climate crisis | The Guardian
Climate crisis
Climate disasters in first half of 2025 costliest ever on record, research showsLA wildfires and storms this year cost $101bn, new study by non-profit resurrecting work axed by Trump says Fourteen separate weather-related disasters that each caused at least $1bn in damage hit the US in the first six months of the year. Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images
Oliver Milman, and graphics by Andrew Witherspoon
Wed 22 Oct 2025
The first half of 2025 was the costliest on record for major disasters in the US, driven by huge wildfires in Los Angeles and storms that battered much of the rest of the country, according to a climate non-profit that has resurrected work axed by Donald Trump’s administration that tracked the biggest disasters.
In the first six months of this year, 14 separate weather-related disasters that each caused at least $1bn in damage hit the US, the Climate Central group has calculated. In total, these events cost $101bn in damages – lost homes, businesses, highways and other infrastructure – a toll higher than any other first half of a year since records on this began in 1980.
The bulk of this toll was caused by the ferocious wildfires that razed parts of Los Angeles in January, a disaster that destroyed about 16,000 buildings and resulted in the indirect deaths of around 400 people. At $61bn in damages, the LA fires are one of the most expensive climate-related disasters on record in the US, and the only top 10 event that is not a hurricane.
The mounting cost of fires, storms, hurricanes, drought and floods – all worsened by the human-caused climate crisis – was charted over the previous 45 years by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), until the Trump administration “ retired” the dataset in May, citing “evolving priorities, statutory mandates and staffing changes”.
Information on billion-dollar disasters until the end of 2024 is still available, frozen, on Noaa’s website, but Climate Central has sought to extend this work, citing its importance as a barometer of the climate crisis as well as a planning resource for cities and states facing increasing dangers from extreme weather impacts.
Over the past four decades, such disasters have become far more savage. The cost of all disasters between 1985 and 1995 was $299bn, a figure dwarfed by the damages of the past decade – with $1.4tn in losses between 2014 and last year.
“This dataset is simply too important to not be updated, we were getting requests from the private sector, local communities and academia for this information,” said Adam Smith, who headed the billion-dollar disaster project at Noaa, before ending his 20-year spell at the agency in May amid a purge of the federal workforce by Trump.
Smith, who has now revived this work at Climate Central, said the latest dataset was compiled using the same methodology as Noaa. “We are certainly seeing more of these big, costly events, since 2017 it’s been on an entirely different level,” he said. “Climate change is supercharging the intensity and frequency of these extremes.
“Climate Central is trying to step into the void of information to recover some of the lost expertise and tools that society needs access to. We are in a sort of triage situation where we are trying to save and continue as much as we can. We are doing the best we can to do this.
The initial Climate Central update ends in June, meaning it doesn’t capture July’s deadly floods in Texas, which killed more than 130 people, including young girls camping beside a river that burst its banks.
Also, so far this year the US has not been hit by a major, destructive hurricane, meaning that 2025 is currently not on track to be among the most costly on record by year’s end. The lack of hurricanes making landfall is fortunate, experts have said, particularly as the Trump administration has sought to dismantle the disaster response that Americans have come to take for granted.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has slashed staff numbers, with Trump demanding states, rather than the federal government, shoulder the fallout from major disasters.
The agency has faced criticism over its leadership, its sluggish response times to disasters and for the politically motivated withholding of its funds – last week, a federal judge ruled that Fema could not halt grants to Democratic-run states due to differences over immigration policies.
This is a “tremendous concern” given the growing threat from disasters that are being worsened by the climate crisis, as well as population shifts to risky areas such as Florida and the failure to update infrastructure to cope with a warming world, according to Samantha Montano, an expert in emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
“No part of the country is being left unscathed, but unfortunately Fema has backslid to becoming a dysfunctional and ineffectual agency,” Montano said. Improvements made to Fema since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have been wiped out under Trump, Montano added, leaving local and state agencies unsure of how to cope when disasters strike.
“Fema has fired people who have unique expertise who can’t just be hired back at five hours’ notice, so even if the administration wanted to respond effectively to a disaster I’m not sure it’s possible for them to do so,” she said.
“We’ve got extremely lucky we’ve not had any bigger disasters than we’ve already had this year. We are basically sitting ducks for when the next major disaster hits.”
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
INCREDIBLE HISTORIC 37C IN SPAIN
36.6C Manilva,5 stations >34C,
it's hotter than July.
Very hot also in Turkey and Cyprus with 34C and will be hotter next days.
40c in North Africa.
Summer will continue allover the Mediterranean except in Italy,which will be totally untouched. — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T17:51:27.183Z
HISTORIC HEAT IN SPAIN
35.3 at Manilva.
A month of full summer conditions with many records coming next days with tropical nights.
All the opposite has happened in Italy with 0 days of the month above its JANUARY national heat record. — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T19:05:51.730Z
MEDITERRANEAN HISTORIC HEAT
Exceptional heat continues with widespread tropical nights.Minimums 20C/25C in Spain,Portugal,Morocco,Algeria,Tunisia and Libya and next days also in Greece and Turkey with summer conditions
RECORD October hot night in Alicante SPAIN
Minimum 22.4C — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T12:06:51.118Z
EXTRAORDINARY HEAT
Thousands of stations at record levels (up to 6C above records) allover Asia,North Africa and Europe
Absolute insanity going on with temperatures >40C in most Middle East countries,31C in the Kazakhstan,40C in Algeria,38C Morocco,36C Spain
Records allover
tbc — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T15:20:19.103Z
EXTRAORDINARY RECORD HOT NIGHTS ALLOVER ASIA
Persistent Minimums >27C in Okinawa Prefecture,JAPAN
Mins 28C+ Vietnam,India,Iran
and...
MINIMUMS still >30C ‼️in the Emirates and Oman
Today Min 30.5C Khor Fakkan
Remind: In 1 week it's will be November — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T09:59:15.834Z
EXTRAORDINARY HEAT IN OCEANIA
Records smashed everywhere.
35.8 Surprise Island
NEW CALEDONIA HOTTEST OCTOBER DAY EVER
Minimum 27.6 Tanjungpinang INDONESIA
HOTTEST NIGHT EVER
Records are falling from Melanesia to Emirates ALLOVER ASIA. (MIN >27 in Japan !)
Unprecedented — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T04:56:43.002Z
EXTRAORDINARY HEAT IN SOUTH AFRICA
43C right on the coast.
Records brutalized with extreme margins:
42.9 Coffee Bay
42.2 Ngqura
41.4 east london
South Africa is living one of the most extreme events in its climatic history and more records are on the way. — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T19:34:14.777Z
Prominent climate scientist, @katharinehayhoe.com, argues it's time to ditch the 'myth of neutrality.'
www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks...
💯 ... The other side has done that a long time ago. — Social Media Lab (@socialmedialab.ca) 2025-10-24T16:04:11.413Z
The oceans and land mop up about half of the carbon that humans emit. Until they don't.
My new piece on the weakening of natural carbon sinks, and the fallacy that we humans have our hands on a global thermostat, is out now for
@carnegieendowment.org
carnegieendowment.org/emissary/202... — Noah Gordon (@noahjgordon.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T19:49:48.145Z
Only a third of Americans even somewhat support drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Source: @yaleclimatecomm.bsky.social — Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) 2025-10-23T21:11:51.456Z
#ClimateJustice: “It is really important for me to carry our story outside the island, outside the Philippines, and tell the whole world that we are here, we exist”
www.mercurynews.com/2025/10/23/2... — Silicon Valley North - Citizens Climate Lobby (@cclsvn.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T13:34:17.991Z
Hello! we have a new paper out today in @science.org reviewing Calcifying Plankton : from Biomineralization to Global change 🌊🧪🐚
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... — Will Gray (@willerstorfi.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T20:29:46.685Z
The Middle East is warming twice as fast as the globe thanks in no small part to its own oil + gas emissions—but from youth activists to engineers, people here are proving that even in the hottest places, change is happening.
Read on MailChimp: shorturl.at/SvFiy
Read on LinkedIn: shorturl.at/fjOiY — Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) 2025-10-22T18:01:39.209Z
UK food inflation is being driven by climate change-induced extreme weather, driving up price of butter, milk, beef, chocolate & coffee
The price rises in those staples is contributing 40% of overall food inflation
Climate change is hitting peoples' pockets, right now
www.ft.com/content/ced8... — Doug Parr (@dougparr.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T06:28:52.543Z
Diffenbaugh, N. S. (2025) Committed acceleration of climate stresses in the coming decades. Environmental Research: Climate, in press. doi.org/10.1088/2752... — Andy Scollick (@andyscollick.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T15:42:45.562Z
Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country.
Three specimens discovered in what was previously one of the few places in the world without the insects.
www.theguardian.com/environment/... — Jos Olivier (@josolivier.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T15:43:57.557Z
This is SUCH an important point. Most people are worried about climate change: but most people feel helpless and think nothing’s being done (so why should they do anything?)
This is why my weekly newsletter always includes good news on climate solutions as well as actions we can take! — Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) 2025-10-20T16:21:14.730Z
what a great new podcast from @cathmckenna.bsky.social! First guest - Christiana Figueres. Check it out: www.womenleadingonclimate.org/our-podcast — Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) 2025-10-23T22:27:13.802Z
📉 US regulators just scrapped climate risk rules for big banks, calling them confusing and costly. Critics say it weakens risk oversight. — Climate Proof (@climateproof.news) 2025-10-23T19:00:51.207Z
— Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T07:08:18.586Z
We have 1 open PhD and 1 postdoctoral researcher position to work with terrestrial carbon cycling in abrupt #permafrost thaw features in the Arctic.
More information here:
www.uni-hamburg.de/en/stellenan...
@cenunihh.bsky.social — Carolina Voigt (@arctic-carolina.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T09:30:36.242Z
The Hurricane Hunters are in Melissa, and have found the long-predicted intensification process has begun: top winds are now 60 mph, and the central pressure down to 999 mb. @bhensonweather.bsky.social and I have the latest:
yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/10/meli... — Dr. Jeff Masters (@drjeffmasters.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T17:04:17.165Z
“Getting hit by a hurricane is never good. But getting hit by a hurricane that’s not moving is so much worse.”
www.scientificamerican.com/article/hurr... — Brian McNoldy (@bmcnoldy.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T21:27:21.655Z
Should the forecasts for #Melissa verify, it will become the next Category 4+ tropical cyclone for the globe. Longer-range trends show a higher frequency of total storms reaching the Cat 4/5 equivalent threshold. Roughly 40% of hurricane-equivalent global storms now obtain Cat 4/5 strength. — Steve Bowen (@stevebowen.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T19:44:15.697Z
Jamaica has low storm surge risk—not a lot of low-lying areas. An exception: Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport (built on fill), Soapberry Wastewater Treatment Plant, Portmore Mall, Jamworld Entertainment Center, the National Gallery, Petrojam Refinery, Caribbean Maritime University. — Dr. Jeff Masters (@drjeffmasters.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T17:06:08.864Z
Late Oct. 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit Jamaica (Cat 1), Cuba (Cat 3), interacted with an extratropical storm, which slung Cat 1 Sandy into NJ. Some ensemble forecasts are predicting a similar scenario for #Melissa. Low probability, but an East Coast extratropical storm is forecast for late next week. — Dr. Jeff Masters (@drjeffmasters.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T02:00:05.203Z
Remarkable graph showing how renewable have cut need to important fossil fuels in many countries, improving their budgets and global climate. www.carbonbrief.org/iea-renewabl... — Nancy Knowlton (@nancyknowlton.bsky.social) 2025-10-22T19:48:23.548Z
#RenewableEnergy investment should come from defence budgets, say retired military leaders
Former European officers say spending on low-carbon power would make nations more resilient to threats from potential aggressors.
www.theguardian.com/environment/... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T11:43:18.519Z
— Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T08:35:23.853Z
— Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T07:21:51.184Z
5 years
The time it would take for the planned expansions at Heathrow, Luton and Gatwick airports to wipe out emissions savings UK govt’s clean power plan.
#climate
neweconomics.org/2025/01/airp... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T08:23:03.949Z
'New #nuclear Hinkley C, forecast to be seven years late and cost in excess of £45 billion. Equivalent to £1 million paid every day for 123 years (not including operation and decommissioning).
#Scotland
www.thenational.scot/politics/255... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T09:44:41.393Z
'Discovery of significant levels of decades-old nuclear waste in the Highlands highlights why #Scotland must reject Labour's dangerous new #nuclear power plant plans'
www.thenational.scot/news/2556642... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T09:37:12.847Z
Just for starters ...
'Cost of underground facility for long-term storage of #nuclear waste revealed £68.7bn - £15bn more than National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority’s recent report, who said the project appears to be “unachievable”.'
www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/true-... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T09:28:44.944Z
The @nytimes.com climate section is profiling federal scientists who have been terminated and their work.
I spoke with tsunami expert Corina Allen, who worked to ensure tsunami alerts made it to the public. She was fired in February.
Read her story and others':
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/c... — Becca Dzombak (@rdzombak.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T18:20:40.272Z
The North Atlantic right whale, one of the rarest whales on the planet, now numbers an estimated 384 animals, up 8 whales from the previous year, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium.
Right whales were once hunted to the brink of extinction.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025... — Josie Glausiusz (@josiegz.bsky.social) 2025-10-22T08:15:06.531Z
Update on the Paleontological Research Institution and their remaining need for donations to pay off their mortgage and avoid foreclosure
#savePRI please share; tag anyone you think might help🧪⚒️🦑
@lastweektonight.com @colbertlateshow.bsky.social @pbseons.bsky.social
www.ithaca.com/news/regiona... — Dr. Brendan Anderson (@fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T03:47:51.203Z
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