Weather and climate extremes in which multiple hazards act jointly to cause an impact, also known as compound events, often cause higher losses than their univariate counterparts. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of past occurrences of compound events taking into account 24 bi-hazard combinations consisting of 12 common natural hazards with the potential to cause a significant socio-economic impact. For this, hazards are defined either by specific indices or by applying appropriate thresholds to physical variables directly. Using global observational data sets, the study identifies regional hotspots for the occurrence of compound events and determines those hazard-pairs dominating the compound event spectrum in a selection of highly populated and economically important regions. The results of this study will illustrate which hazards need to be linked to provide reliable risk assessments for a set of specific geographical regions. As such, the extensive climatology of co-occurring hazards generated in this study can be used to assess the ability of climate models to represent the complex interactions involved in compound events and detect possible changes in the underlying drivers of compound events under global climate change.