A flagship US climate-disaster database killed by President Donald Trump's administration has been brought back to life by its former lead scientist -- revealing that extreme weather inflicted a record $101 billion in damages in just the first half of 2025.
The Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters tracker, long maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), chronicled major US catastrophes from 1980 to 2024 before it was abruptly shut down in May amid sweeping budget cuts that critics decried as an ideologically driven attack on science.
