Costly thunderstorms, hurricanes, wildfires, and devastating monsoon rains besieged the planet last year.
National Guard troops respond in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Laura was Earth’s most expensive tropical cyclone of 2020, with $18.2 billion in damage. (Photo credit: Josiah Pugh)
Earth was besieged by a record 50 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2020, the most such disasters ever recorded after adjusting for inflation, said insurance broker Aon (formerly called Aon Benfield) in its annual report issued January 25. The previous record was 46 billion-dollar weather disasters, set in 2010 and 2011. The annual average of billion-dollar weather disasters since records began in 1990 is 29.