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Firefighters try to keep flames from a burning home from spreading to a neighboring apartment complex as they battle the Camp Fire on November 9, 2018 in Paradise, California.
- Thousands of people died this year in wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
- Climate scientists say these events will become even more severe as global temperatures keep rising.
- Some of this year's natural disasters set records based on the number of deaths and other factors like wind speed and amount of rainfall.
Natural disasters devastated communities around the world in 2018, killing thousands of people and inflicting billions of dollars in damage.
In September, at least 1,900 people died in Indonesia after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake and a subsequent tsunami with waves as high as 20 feet. The following month, Hurricane Michael, the strongest storm to hit the United States in 50 years, devastated North and South Carolina and killed dozens of people. Some of the worst fires in US history hit California shortly afterward, melting cars, reducing bodies to bone, and wiping out an entire town.
Much of the record-breaking devastation was caused by elevated temperatures on land and at sea. In a warming world, climate scientists say these disasters will only continue to become more severe.
Here are some of the year's worst natural disasters.