© Carlos Giusti/APPeople walk next to a gas station flooded and damaged by the impact of Hurricane Maria, which hit the eastern region of the island, in Humacao, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, September 20, 2017.
2017 was an expensive, deadly year of natural disasters on Earth.
Wildfires
relentlessly scorched dry land from
California to
Portugal. Super-strength
hurricanes and tropical storms slammed homes from the Caribbean to
Ireland. Famine
continued in Somalia and Yemen, while
avalanches killed more than a hundred people in Afghanistan.
People around the world recorded record-breaking devastation, much of it caused by higher-than-usual temperatures on land and at sea. Climate experts say that in a warming world, these fatal events will continue to worsen.
A November 2017 report
released by the Trump Administration cautioned that "extreme climate events" like heavy rainfall, extreme heatwaves, wildfires, and sea-level rise will all get more severe around the globe, and that some of these events could result in abrupt, irreversible changes to the climate as we know it.
Here's a look at some of the deadly power Mother Nature wielded in 2017:
A trio of super-strong hurricanes pummeled the Caribbean and US Gulf Coast, with each storm causing tens of billions of dollars in damage.
Comment: Irish Central reports Storm Eleanor battered the shores with winds over 80 mph, with Galway catching the worst. The storm coincided with high tide in Galway City leaving fallen trees and severe flooding in its wake: