These accounted for the major share of fatalities in 2010 and just under half the overall losses caused by natural catastrophes, said the insurance company.

One of the most devastating earthquakes in the history of the past 100 years, the quake in Haiti on January 12 killed more than 220,000 people. Only the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China claimed more lives, 242,000.

"While the earthquake in Haiti resulted in human tragedy on a staggering scale, it gave rise to only negligible losses for the insurance industry, as is so often the case in developing countries," says the Munich Re report.

Five hundred times more energy than in the Haiti quake was released by the earthquake that hit Chile just over a month later - the fifth-strongest earthquake ever measured. With overall losses of US$30 billion and insured losses of US$8 billion, this quake was last year's most expensive natural catastrophe.

In the summer, floods following extreme monsoon rainfall had devastating consequences in Pakistan. For weeks, up to one-quarter of the country was flooded. The floods affected an estimated 20 million people, many of whom lost all their worldly possessions. The overall loss totalled US$9.5 billion, said Munich Re, an extremely high amount for Pakistan's emerging economy.

Millions of Pakistanis are still in need of assistance, two senior United Nations officials said Thursday.

"With an estimated 20 million people affected by devastating floods, the country faced its biggest ever humanitarian crisis," Rauf-Engin Soysal, the secretary-general's special envoy for assistance to Pakistan, and UN Resident Coordinator Timo Pakkala said in a joint message.

The $2 billion appeal for aid for Pakistani flood victims made in September, the largest-ever launched by the UN for a natural disaster, is currently 51 percent funded.

The heatwave in Russia and neighboring countries between July and September brought record high temperatures to Moscow. In some regions of central Russia, temperatures exceeded 30 degrees Celsius for two months.