Floods have become common in the cold, dry country

Oyunchimeg Dechinlhundev lives within the outskirts of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. She makes a dwelling from elevating chickens and geese and rising greens.

“After I was a toddler, 10 days of rain by no means flooded our road,” Oyunchimeg, who’s in her late 40s and has lived right here her total life, remembers. “However a number of instances up to now decade 10 minutes of rain have destroyed every little thing I planted.”

Flooding brought on by heavy rain has destroyed her crops and killed her chickens on a number of events. “Now, we panic and fear when the rain begins to drop,” Oyunchimeg says.

In an try to stop the injury, yearly initially of summer time she and her neighbours reinforce their fences with limitations created from earth.

Rainfall patterns have modified in Mongolia over the previous 40 years, meteorologists have discovered. Whereas total the nation receives the identical quantity of annual precipitation, deluges are changing the sunshine rain that beforehand would fall for greater than per week. This has damaging penalties for the wildlife and livestock on Mongolia’s grasslands, in addition to individuals dwelling in its fast-expanding cities.

In 2004, solely 9 incidents of heavy rain and floods have been recorded by Mongolia’s Nationwide Emergency Administration Company. Within the 18 years since that quantity has risen, with official knowledge recording 72 disasters simply final yr.

Mongolia’s common temperature has elevated by 2 levels Celsius over the previous 70 years, in keeping with the Nationwide Company for Meteorology and the Environmental Monitoring.

Dulamsuren Dashkhuu, senior researcher and director of the Local weather Change Analysis Division on the Data and Analysis Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Surroundings, a authorities company in Ulaanbaatar, explains that hotter temperatures imply extra evaporation. Extra humidity within the air means extra frequent and intense rainfall and cloudbursts – an influence of local weather change.

City migration

The Mongolian Plateau is chilly and dry, and annual precipitation ranges from 50 to 400 mm. For 1000’s of years Mongolian nomadic herders have tailored to the tough situations. However lately, they’ve had to deal with extra erratic climate as sudden downpours and lengthy durations of drought develop into extra frequent.

That is resulting in a cycle of droughts, floods and the degradation of pastureland, says Dulamsuren. “When heavy rainfall falls on dry soil, it by no means goes deep into the soil. As an alternative, the rainfall flows away or washes away the soil, and even animals and gers [traditional Mongolian yurts, which also translates as ‘home’],” she explains. In response to Nationwide Emergency Administration Company, between 2004 and 2021 over 75,000 livestock have been misplaced due to flooding and heavy rain.

In 1991, nomadic households accounted for greater than half of the inhabitants, knowledge from Mongolia’s Nationwide Statistical Workplace exhibits. As of 2020, they have been solely 26%. Previously 30 years, excessive harsh climate occasions referred to as dzuds have develop into extra widespread, with local weather change one of many driving components, scientists have stated.

Though the explanations for rural-to-urban migration are a number of and complicated, a standard thread is that following the lack of their animals, herders have moved from Mongolia’s pasturelands to the provincial capitals, with newcomers flocking to the largest cities of Ulaanbaatar, Erdenet and Darkhan.

Between 1990 and 2021, official knowledge exhibits, the inhabitants of Ulaanbaatar almost trebled, rising from 5,90,000 to 1.6 million. (It’s doubtless a lot greater in actuality, the results of a ban on new inflows in 2017-’20 that has resulted in giant numbers of unregistered residents in casual settlements.)

A UN Worldwide Group for Migration research in 2018 discovered that migrant households settle the place they’ll afford to dwell – usually in a metropolis’s outskirts, with out entry to central heating, working water and the sewage system. Their gers have expanded the areas of slum and casual housing, referred to as “ger districts”.

The most affordable or free websites are on the slopes of hills or valleys – the websites most uncovered to environmental hazards resembling sewage runoff and flooding.

In Mongolia’s harsh winters, gers are sturdy towards the wind and hold out the chilly. However these domed tented properties are simply broken by working floodwater and may be washed away.

Since 2004, greater than 3,500 gers have been destroyed by floods and heavy rain in Mongolia; over half of this injury occurred in simply the previous 4 years, in keeping with Nationwide Emergency Administration Company.

Altering rainfall patterns round Ulaanbaatar, mixed with urbanisation, have resulted in a rise in flooding across the metropolis. Jambajamts Lkhamjamts from the Division of Meteorology and Hydrology on the Nationwide College of Mongolia says that beforehand simply over 10 incidents of sunshine rainfall per yr “was the norm” for the town, which acquired about 400 mm of annual precipitation. “Nevertheless,” he says, “after 1990, solely as much as 5 [incidents of] rains, with stronger fall charges, have been recorded.” Cloud formations across the metropolis have modified, he says, explaining that “gentle rain falls from low-level horizontal clouds, however heavy rain falls from vertical clouds. In Ulaanbaatar, 16 km-tall [vertical] cumulonimbus clouds are generally noticed whereas we don’t see decrease horizontal clouds anymore.”

Mom-of-three Munkhtuya Tumurkhuyag lives in the identical ger district as Oyunchimeg Dechinlhundev and has skilled the tough impacts of the town’s altering climate first-hand. Three years in the past in July, floodwater streamed by her home. She and 5 of her neighbours needed to be hospitalised shortly afterwards with diarrhoea and vomiting, the place they have been instructed that they had dysentery. “A lot water and faeces got here by our window. We have been vomiting and had continual diarrhoea. Plus we obtained pneumonia due to the chilly,” she says.

The floodwaters, Munkhtuya says, swept away pit bathrooms utilized by individuals dwelling within the hilly ger districts and introduced the uncooked sewage downhill, to the place her home is.

Yearly for the previous 5 years, dysentery, salmonella and hand, foot and mouth illness instances have peaked between June and August, knowledge from the Mongolian authorities’s Well being Growth Heart exhibits.

Munkhtuya’s home has not flooded since 2019, as a United Nations Human Settlements Programme challenge put in three sewage methods within the ger districts.

However Munkhtuya’s expertise factors to the broader issues skilled by a metropolis whose inhabitants has grown rapidly with out accompanying infrastructure growth. Ulaanbaatar lacks roads, electrical energy traces and sewage methods. Earlier this yr the town’s mayoral workplace introduced that the Ulaanbaatar metropolis authorities have been constructing new sewage methods, however it has additionally stated the town nonetheless must construct a 300-km sewage system and water reservoir.

Town’s altering climate and lack of infrastructure have a number of societal and public well being impacts. Nandintsetseg Mygmarbaatar, 34, is disabled and walks with a crutch. After heavy rain her road floods and turns into muddy, and her crutch slips simply. She says she has fallen a few dozen instances and damaged her ankle and elbow.

“As soon as our streets have been flooded, muddy puddles linger right here the entire summer time,” says Nandintsetseg. “Generally the native authorities dump some filth to dry up the puddles, however then it floods once more. Elders or individuals like me are pressured to remain dwelling for our security.”

This text first appeared on The Third Pole.