MUNICH (dpa-AFX) - Increasingly violent storms and extreme weather conditions raise fears of rising natural catastrophe losses around the world in the coming years, according to reinsurer Munich Re. Last year, floods, storms, forest fires and other catastrophes caused economic losses of $270 billion (251.53 billion euros) worldwide, the company said Tuesday.

While that was less than 2021's $320 billion in losses, it joined the "loss-intensive" past five years. Financially, the most serious catastrophe last year was Hurricane Ian, which hit the U.S. East Coast in late September, with $100 billion in losses, according to the report.

Natural disasters are also becoming increasingly expensive for insurers: of the $270 billion in total losses, about $120 billion were insured. "We have something of a new normal with 100 billion annual losses for the insurance industry," said Ernst Rauch, head of geological research at Munich Re. "We have exceeded that five times in the recent past. In the future, we will reach or exceed a hundred billion more and more often."

Munich Re has been documenting natural catastrophes for decades because the data is important for calculating insurance premiums. North America is often hit the hardest, including last year with $150 billion in total losses.

Hurricanes are a significant factor. "Hurricane statistics in the Atlantic go back to 1851," Rauch said. "On average, there have been about eleven to twelve named tropical cyclones per year since then, though observational data from earlier decades are not necessarily complete."

There have been confirmed data since satellite observations began in the late 1970s, he said. "And since then, we've had an average of about 14 to 15 named storms per year, many of them hurricane strength. Also our observation in recent years is that the number of storms in the North Atlantic has increased."

Munich Re expects the trend, which is troubling for the U.S. East Coast and the Caribbean, to continue. "There has also been an increase in the proportion of particularly strong storms, and this will continue to increase as climate change continues," Rauch said.

The Asia-Pacific region came in second in terms of natural catastrophe losses, with around $70 billion. Losses in Europe amounted to about 25 billion. Most unusual, according to the company's geoscientists, were extreme drought and temperatures.

"In Hamburg and in London, we had over 40 degrees for the first time, and again - similar to 2018 - we saw a severe drought," Rauch said. There are not many years when you can feel climate change so directly in Germany." Rauch's expectation for the future: "We will see this combination of heat and drought more often in the future."

According to evaluations by the EU's Copernicus Earth observation program, the summer of 2022 was the warmest ever recorded in Europe, and the year 2022 as a whole was the second warmest since records began in 1979. So far, only 2020 has been hotter.

In addition, individual natural catastrophes are now causing much more serious damage in some regions of the world than in the past: "The floods in Australia show a leap in damage development that we are increasingly observing in some countries and for some natural hazards," Rauch said. For example, flood losses in Australia totaled $4.7 billion, well over double the previous largest flood loss of $1.8 billion.

This also applies to Germany: "In the Ahr Valley, the insured loss of eight billion euros exceeded the previous flood loss record in Germany by a factor of four," said Rauch, citing the flood of summer 2021 as an example.

The German Insurance Association (GDV) therefore called on German policymakers to do more for prevention and loss mitigation: "Prevention and climate impact adaptation are the linchpin to prevent natural disasters like the Ahr Valley flood," said Chief Executive Jörg Asmussen. "We insurers appeal to policymakers to put this at the center of their considerations when discussing natural hazard insurance." This refers to the recurring debates about compulsory insurance against floods and high water for homeowners.

According to analyses by the EU's Copernicus program, temperatures in Europe have risen more than twice as fast as the global average over the past 30 years, and of all seven continents, Europe is warming the most. Concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere have risen to record levels in 2022, according to the report: An annual average of 417 parts per million (ppm) for carbon dioxide and 1894 parts per billion (ppb) for methane.

The measurements showed "that atmospheric concentrations continue to rise, with no sign of slowing down in this regard," said Vincent-Henri Peuch, head of the Copernicus monitoring service. The observations are based on measurements on the ground, in air and water, and from Earth observation and weather satellites./cho/DP/jha