Last year topped the previous temperature record in Europe, registered in 2019, by a whopping 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 Fahrenheit), the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said.
Preliminary figures, compiled by the reinsurance giant Swiss Re, show that a full $175 billion losses were from natural catastrophes during a year characterised by unusual numbers of storms, wildfires and hurricanes.
The International Red Cross estimates that about 4.2 million people were affected by the back-to-back Category 4 hurricanes in November in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala.
British charity Christian Aid says the disasters displaced millions and caused widespread deaths - seven of them caused damage of more than $10 billion.
Some 230,000 people were killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami set off by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake on December 26, 2004. A dozen countries were hit, from Indonesia, to India and Africa's east coast.
After several quiet years, tornadoes have erupted in the US over the last two weeks as a volatile mix of warm, moist air from the southeast and persistent cold from the Rockies clashed and stalled over the Midwest.
Television channels said the storm and accompanying heavy rainfall, uprooted trees and electric and telephone poles, crushing some people to death.
The latest death toll from the volcano-triggered disaster in Indonesia stands at 429, with 1,485 people injured and another 154 missing.
Rescue teams, hampered by power and phone outages, use cadaver dogs, drones and heavy equipment to search for hundreds of people unaccounted for in devastated communities across the Florida Panhandle.
At least six deaths were blamed on Michael, the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental US in over 50 years, and it wasn't done yet.
The storm took its first victim when a tree fell on a house, killing a man. With roaring winds, Michael blew ashore near Mexico Beach, a tourist town about midway along the Panhandle, a 320-km stretch of white-sand beach resorts.
Hurricane Michael strengthens to a Category 3 storm as Florida declared a state of emergency for 35 counties from the Panhandle to Tampa Bay.
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