Roger Pielke Jr., a former environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado, requested that NOAA correct its billion dollar disasters (BDD) dataset in January, alleging that the dataset’s sourcing and methodology are not sufficiently transparent for the metric to inform policy. NOAA responded to Pielke’s correction request on Aug. 21, admitting that the dataset has not undergone external peer review since 2015 and committing to improving its “documentation and transparency” of the dataset’s component parts going forward.

BDD data keeps track of natural disasters that caused $1 billion or more in inflation-adjusted damages going back to 1980, with NOAA and the Biden White House contending that the increasing frequency of BDD events evidences worsening climate change. However, BDD is an economic statistic rather than an indicator of changing meteorological conditions; the same exact hurricane could hit the same exact city 100 years apart, but the damage totals for each storm would be vastly different given that there are more assets to be destroyed in harm’s way now than there were a century ago.

NOAA BDD RFC Response by Nick Pope on Scribd:

In response to Pielke’s request, NOAA said it would start disclosing more of the publicly available sources that it uses to craft its data, formalize and disclose the steps the agency takes to ensure the BDD data’s “robustness” and set up a peer-review system that is consistent with NOAA’s own policies.

“NOAA made some difficult admissions here about the fact that the BDD tabulation has failed to meet their standards for scientific integrity and information quality,” Pielke, who believes climate change is a serious problem, told the DCNF. “The BDD tabulation is clever marketing and the media love it. However, no one should mistake it as science.”

Pielke addressed NOAA’s response to his request in an Aug. 21 post to his Substack page, writing that “these responses and admissions clearly indicate that the NOAA tabulation is not suitable for research.” He added that NOAA’s response to his correction request concedes that “historical versions of the tabulation (and thus new entries and changes to it) are only available since 2020,” meaning “that 40 of (almost) 44 years of the tabulation lack basic information on the loss estimates and how they were originally compiled.”

While BDD’s critics contend it is a flawed metric to use as a proxy for the intensity of climate change, the statistic was used in a landmark climate report published by the Biden administration in 2023 and cited as evidence to support the administration’s freeze on approvals for new liquified natural gas export terminals by Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk in written testimony submitted to Congress in February.

“NOAA notes that the RFC [request for correction] did not identify specific data points that need correcting. In conducting its review of the RFC, NOAA has not identified any data inaccuracies in the Billion Dollar Disaster data set,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “NOAA has determined the U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters data set meets the threshold for influential scientific information (ISI) under NOAA’s Information Quality Guidelines. As a result, NOAA will review and update its management practices for the data set.”

The actions NOAA will take to improve its BDD data include “disclosing and facilitating access to several publicly available input sources; disclosing and facilitating access to methodologically relevant factors, such as insurance penetration rates and underlying economic data; formalizing procedures currently used to check the robustness of NOAA’s analyses, and stating these on the Billion Dollar Disaster website; and, instituting a peer-review cycle consistent with the data set’s ISI determination,” NOAA added in its statement.

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The significance of this event lies in the potential impact of these powerful bursts of energy on various systems. NASA noted in a statement that these solar flares can disrupt radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to both spacecraft and astronauts. Following this particular solar flare, radio frequency blackouts were reported across the United States.

This is likely one of the largest solar radio events ever recorded. Radio communication interference with aircraft were reported by multiple NWS Center Weather Service Units (CWSU) co-located at FAA facilities. See https://t.co/U2jmmJNjJV for full story. pic.twitter.com/tAiLovhCUw

— NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (@NWSSWPC) December 15, 2023

While such events are rare, the consequences of extreme coronal mass ejections (CME), large bursts of plasma from the Sun, can be severe. In a worst-case scenario, they have the potential to cause months-long blackouts on Earth, resulting in billions of dollars in damages and harm to satellites.

A recent study from Lancaster University, published on Monday, added another layer of concern by revealing that solar storms could induce errors in railway systems. The study highlighted that in extreme cases, these storms could alter train signals from red to green, introducing a new dimension of risk to transportation infrastructure.

The Sun’s activity is measured in 11-year cycles, and solar flares are classified based on their intensity, ranging from the weakest (B class) to C, M, and the most powerful (X). NOAA scientists have categorized Thursday’s solar flare as an X-class event, marking it not only as the largest within the current Solar Cycle 25 but also the most substantial since September 2017.

Interestingly, while CMEs can pose threats, they also have the potential to enhance natural phenomena such as auroras. This particular solar flare has raised the possibility of residents in New England witnessing the northern lights, according to reports from CBS News.

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Article generated from corporate media reports.