2010: The year in which ….

In January, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Haiti — the most violent such event to strike the impoverished nation in a century. An estimated 230,000 people died and a further 1 million were left homeless. Other earthquakes, including a magnitude-8.8 quake in Chile in February and a magnitude 7.1 in New Zealand in September, also caused widespread damage, but smaller death tolls. Ash from the eruption of volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland grounded commercial flights across Europe for a week in April, stranding thousands of travellers (see ‘Quotes of the year’). And unusually intense rains related to the La Niña cooling of the Pacific Ocean flooded one-fifth of Pakistan and affected an estimated 20 million people. The weather pattern was also implicated in a drought in Russia as the country experienced the hottest summer in its recorded history, unleashing hundreds of deadly wildfires.