Climate

Mongolia is high, cold and dry. It has an extreme continental climate with long, cold winters and short summers, during which most precipitation falls. The country averages 257 cloudless days a year, and it is usually at the centre of a region of high atmospheric pressure.

Mongolia's weather is characterised by extreme variability and short-term unpredictability in the summer, and the multiyear averages conceal wide variations in precipitation, dates of frosts, and occurrences of blizzards and spring dust storms.

Temperatures

Average temperatures over most of the country are below freezing from November through March and are about freezing in April and October. January and February averages of -20°C are common, with winter nights of -40°C occurring most years. Summer extremes reach as high as 38°C in the southern Gobi region and 33°C in Ulaanbaatar.

Ulaanbaatar has an average annual temperature of -2.9°C and a frost-free period extending on the average from mid-June to late August. In summer, temperatures can reach 33°C.

Precipitation

Precipitation is highest in the north, which averages 20 to 35 cm per year, and lowest in the south, which receives 10 to 20 cm. The extreme south is the Gobi Desert, some regions of which receive no precipitation at all in most years.

Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator) lies at 1,351 metres above sea level in the valley of the Tuul River. Located in the relatively well-watered north, it receives an annual average of 31 cm of precipitation, almost all of which falls in July and in August.