The weather — and certainly the impacts — of the past 12 months in the United States was actually pretty typical, even benign, in historical context.2
The one variable that stands out among extreme weather is temperature — extreme high temperatures in summer and (in particular) winter were very high in 2023, both of which contribute to a long-term trend that the IPCC has attributed primarily to the emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
This year will come in well below average for the total and insured economic costs of disasters in the United States, mainly because the only landfalling Hurricane (Idalia) resulted in less than $1 billion in total damages, far less than the $22+ billion of an average hurricane season.
Let’s take a quick, but detailed, look at 2023.
