Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters”
Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters” Roger Pielke Jr npj Natural Hazards volume 1, Article number: 12 (2024) Cite this article 10 Altmetric Metrics details Abstract For more than two decades, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published a count of weather-related disasters in the United States that it estimates have exceeded one billion dollars (inflation adjusted) in each calendar year starting in 1980. The dataset is widely cited and applied in research, assessment and invoked to justify policy in federal agencies, Congress and by the U.S. President. This paper performs an evaluation of the dataset under criteria of procedure and substance defined under NOAA’s Information Quality and Scientific Integrity policies. The evaluation finds that the “billion dollar disaster” dataset falls short of meeting these criteria. Thus, public claims promoted by NOAA associated with the dataset and its significance are flawed and at times misleadi
