A woman stands outside a yurt in Ger District, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. There is power plant nearby but the government says it aims to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Courtesy: CC BY-SA 4.0/Nathalie Daoust BHUBANESWAR, India, Jan 26 2021 (IPS) - Climate warming is believed to have taken place at some of the fastest rates in the world in Mongolia, raising the country’s average temperatures by 2.24°C between 1940 and 2015, with the last decade being the warmest of the past 76 years. In the Gobi Desert, the occurrence of dust storms increased from 18 to 57 days between 1960 to 2007, and in 2000 almost half a million people were affected by drought. The north-eastern Asian country’s northern region is expected to become more arid over this century as annual precipitation decreased by 7 percent over the past 76 year despite an increase in winter rains. In addition to the drying landscape, changes in water availability is a serious, growing concern.