Democratic Senator Adam Schiff on Tuesday urged Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting secretary to restore a database that tracked billion-dollar U.S. disasters. He said its removal prevented lawmakers, insurance companies and taxpayers from seeing the growing cost of more frequent natural disasters and from planning for future extreme weather events. … Schiff, who represents California, also warned that sweeping job cuts at NOAA have left the agency understaffed ahead of hurricane season, which begins June 1, saying that 30 of 122 weather forecast offices at the National Weather Service lack chief meteorologists.

Other NOAA news:

• Grist: The government just killed an essential way to assess climate risk
• Down To Earth: Blog: NOAA to retire its public database meant to keep track of costliest climate change-related disasters