Attacks on Federal Climate Data Will Accelerate a Financial Crisis

In January, FIO [Federal Insurance Office ] published the first and most comprehensive national dataset on how climate change is affecting homeowners’ insurance policyholders. FIO’s report detailed the rising premiums, deductibles, and insured losses that are increasingly cutting into households’ budgets. The data highlighted serious challenges in states like Florida and Louisiana, while revealing troubling trends in the Midwest. While the data only covered a limited set of residential policies and just several years, it represented the first step towards greater transparency and recognition of the tangible costs of climate change after decades of industry secrecy.

As DOGE cuts at NOAA threaten to conceal the national tally of billion-dollar disasters, gutting FIO would in turn hide everyday costs paid by consumers through their insurance premiums. Absent a national data collection authority, the public will depend on a weak and fragmented state regulatory system to voluntarily produce a patchwork of data far too slowly to respond to an unfolding crisis — if it publishes any national data at all.