Methodological rigor and conservative estimates
The billion-dollar disaster dataset, now managed by Climate Central after a transition from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), is built on a peer-reviewed methodology. The analysis draws from more than a dozen public and private sources, including FEMA, the USDA, the National Interagency Fire Center, and insurance industry data. The methodology has been refined to address potential biases, but the current approach is still believed to underestimate average losses by 10–15%. As a result, the reported figures should be considered conservative.