A phenomenon called dzud, which combines a harsh winter with drought, has been occurring more frequently. Winter temperatures drop as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit).
The last big dzud in 2010 killed 8.5 million, or 20%, of total livestock in Mongolia. More than a million more died in 2016. And where dzuds used to happen just once or twice a decade, now they kill around half a million livestock each year.
E. Munkhtsetseg, head of the meteorology, hydrology and permafrost research lab at the National University of Mongolia, said the impact of climate change on Mongolia’s pastoral economy and the livelihoods of nomadic herders has been “devastating.”
Govi dust storm travels to China
In Orkhontuya’s region, there has been no rain for the past three years. Most of her family members, friends, and neighbors have already left the herding life.
“Govi is not livable. Not anymore,” Orkhontuya said, adding she also wants to “give up, quit the herding life, and go live in the city.”
“But it’s tough to leave everything behind. This is all we have done and all we know,” she said, next to motorized camper trailers, which many herders use these days. They are quicker to move around the steppe than a ger, the traditional and portable Mongolian yurt or tent.
Yet the impacts of extreme weather are also being felt in the city.
In July, more than 20,000 people were displaced in flooding after what was described as the heaviest rainfall in 50 years in the capital Ulaanbaatar. The number of such incidents has increased tenfold in two decades.
The impacts also extend beyond Mongolia’s borders.
In May, China’s environment ministry said that Mongolia was the main source of 12 large-scale sandstorms, China’s worst in five years, in the first quarter of this year, contributing to as much as 70% of the dust particles in Beijing.
Herders are also the problem
Mongolia is three times the size of France and the most sparsely populated country in the world. Two-thirds of the land area is steppe.
Between the 1920s and 1990, when Mongolia was a satellite of the Soviet Union, the state managed livestock as a socialist collective, limiting the number of animals.