By 2020, the U.S. record has been set for billions of dollars in natural disasters

In 2020, 22 major natural disasters occurred in the U.S., each of which caused at least $ 1 billion in damage, according to a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. analysis published on Friday.

The total cost of these hurricanes, fires and severe storms was $ 95 billion in damage, and by 2020 the nation of disasters would become the fourth most expensive year.

“Every year seems like a broken record that says it’s a historic year, but it’s true,” Adam Smith, an applied climatologist at NOAA’s National Environmental Information Center who worked on the study, told BuzzFeed News. “We are running out of adjectives trying to describe these extreme events.”

The costs of the rise continue to go to and where people continue to move and build homes and businesses that are at risk of damage caused by fires, storms and floods. But man-made climate change is also to blame, causing more and more extreme disasters. The fire seasons are getting longer and longer. Hurricanes are getting wetter and wetter. And more precipitation It is causing more inland flooding in the US.

New data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service show the latest signs of a worsening climate crisis He linked 2020 as the hottest year on record all over the world. U.S. scientists will release an analysis of last year’s temperatures next week.

“As time goes on, fingerprints of climate change become more apparent for some of these extreme events,” Smith said.

The most costly disaster of 2020 was Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 storm off the coast of Louisiana that caused $ 19 billion in damage, one of seven tropical cyclones that cost the U.S. $ 1 billion. Laura also claimed 42 lives and became the nation’s deadliest storm of the year.

Even if 2020 was the busiest season of hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, The U.S. was saved from potentially more storm-related damage because it didn’t hit a big city in a big storm, Smith said.

Hurricanes have historically been one of the most costly disasters in the United States. Earlier in 2017 the record for the highest number of costly disasters was shared – 16 of them – partly due to the active hurricane season, and it still claims the record for the most expensive year, Damaging $ 306, largely due to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

Last year was also a catastrophic year for wildfires. According to NOAA, fires in the western states of California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington caused $ 16.5 billion in damage, burned more than 10.2 million acres and killed 46 people. The fires also released a large amount of air pollution health risks such as asthma and heart disease, Which affect public health costs that are not considered in the NOAA analysis.

Another costly disaster in 2020 was a windstorm that traveled from southeastern South Dakota to Ohio, destroying homes and buildings. power cut for more than a million people, causing a total of $ 11 billion in damage.