KHARKHORIN, Mongolia: Over a year after a devastating winter wiped out virtually his entire sheep flock, herder Zandan Lkhamsuren is still reckoning with the damage wrought by Mongolia’s increasingly erratic extreme weather.
The vast country is one of the most affected by climate change, by some counts warming three times faster than the global average.
The link between rising temperatures and extreme weather — ranging from droughts and floods to heatwaves and cold snaps — is well-established.
In Mongolia the effects are stark.
Among other consequences, deep freezes like the one that killed Zandan’s herd — known as dzuds — have been growing more frequent and intense.
“Last year’s winter was the hardest I’ve ever known,” the 48-year-old told AFP, describing daytime temperatures of minus 32 degrees Celsius (minus 25.6 degrees Fahrenheit) that plunged to minus 42C at night.

Heavy snowfall and frozen ground meant his sheep could not find food, and all except two of his 280-strong flock perished.
Across Mongolia, more than seven million animals were killed, over a tenth of the country’s total.
“Our livestock used to cover all of our expenses, and we used to live very nicely,” Zandan told AFP as he served hot salted milk tea in his traditional ger home.
But the loss of his animals and the loans he took out to keep feeding a smaller, hardier herd of goats mean he now struggles to make ends meet.
Both his daughters were supposed to start university in the capital Ulaanbaatar last year, but the family could not afford their tuition fees.
“Now my strategy is just to focus on what I have left,” Zandan said.
Next to the ger’s coal burner, a persistent bleating came from a box containing a sickly week-old goat.

As the setting sun cast long shadows over the steppe, Zandan pulled on a thick green brocade jacket and strode outside, whistling as he shepherded his indignant charges into a shelter for the night.
He said he was keeping a positive mindset — if he could boost his goat numbers, he might be able to fund his daughters’ studies further down the line.
“It’s just one downside of herders’ lives,” he said stoically. “But I’m sure we can recover.”
The problem for Zandan — and other agricultural workers that make up a third of Mongolia’s population — is that dzuds are happening more often.
They used to occur about once every 10 years, but there have been six in the last decade or so, according to the United Nations.
And while overgrazing has long contributed to desertification on the steppe, climate change is making things even worse.
Droughts in the summers have made it harder to fatten animals and stockpile fodder for winter.
“Like many other herder men, I always look at the sky and try to predict the weather,” Zandan told AFP.
“But it’s been getting difficult,” he said. “Climate change is happening.”

His motorbike kicking up clouds of dust, 36-year-old Enebold Davaa shared those concerns as he chased his herd across the plain.

Enebold’s family lost more than 100 goats, 40 sheep and three cows last winter.
“It’s our main source of income, so we felt very heavy, it was very hard for us,” he said.
This year’s milder winter had allowed the family to recover some of their losses, but Enebold said he viewed the future with trepidation.
“Of course we are anxious, but there’s nothing we can predict now,” he said.
Local official Gankhuyag Banzragch told AFP most families in the district lost 30 to 40 percent of their livestock last winter.
As herding became more difficult, many families were moving away, he added.
A quarter of Mongolians still lead nomadic lives, but in recent decades hundreds of thousands have left the steppe for urban centers, particularly the capital.
As she boiled horsemeat dumplings, Enebold’s wife said they too might consider a move if they lost more livestock.
“The main challenge is accessibility of education for our children in the city,” she said.
Her husband had a more fundamental reason for staying.
“I want to keep herding my livestock,” he said. “I want to keep the same lifestyle as now.”
 

Violent tornadoes ripped through parts of the US, wiping out schools and toppling semitractor-trailers in several states, part of a monster storm that has killed at least 26 people as more severe weather was expected late Saturday.
The number of fatalities increased after the Kansas Highway Patrol reported eight people died in a highway pileup caused by a dust storm in Sherman County Friday. At least 50 vehicles were involved.
Missouri recorded more fatalities than any other state as it withstood scattered twisters overnight that killed at least 12 people, authorities said. The deaths included a man who was killed after a tornado ripped apart his home.
“It was unrecognizable as a home. Just a debris field,” said Coroner Jim Akers of Butler County, describing the scene that confronted rescuers. “The floor was upside down. We were walking on walls.”
Dakota Henderson said he and others rescuing people trapped in their homes Friday night found five dead bodies scattered in the debris outside what remained of his aunt’s house in hard-hit Wayne County, Missouri.
“It was a very rough deal last night,” he said Saturday, surrounded by uprooted trees and splintered homes. “It’s really disturbing for what happened to the people, the casualties last night.”

Henderson said they rescued his aunt from a bedroom that was the only room left standing in her house, taking her out through a window. They also carried out a man who had a broken arm and leg.
Officials in Arkansas said three people died in Independence County and 29 others were injured across eight counties as storms passed through the state.
“We have teams out surveying the damage from last night’s tornadoes and have first responders on the ground to assist,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on X.
She and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared states of emergency. Kemp said he was making the declaration in anticipation of severe weather moving in later Saturday.
On Friday, meanwhile, authorities said three people were killed in car crashes during a dust storm in Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle.
Extreme weather encompasses a zone of 100 million people
The deaths came as a massive storm system moving across the country unleashed winds that triggered deadly dust storms and fanned more than 100 wildfires.
Extreme weather conditions were forecast to affect an area home to more than 100 million people. Winds gusting up to 80 mph (130 kph) were predicted from the Canadian border to Texas, threatening blizzard conditions in colder northern areas and wildfire risk in warmer, drier places to the south.
The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for parts of far western Minnesota and far eastern South Dakota starting early Saturday. Snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches (7.6 to 15.2 centimeters) were expected, with up to a foot (30 centimeters) possible.
Winds gusting to 60 mph (97 kph) were expected to cause whiteout conditions.
Evacuations were ordered in some Oklahoma communities as more than 130 fires were reported across the state. Nearly 300 homes were damaged or destroyed. Gov. Kevin Stitt said at a Saturday news conference that some 266 square miles (689 square kilometers) had burned in his state.
The State Patrol said winds were so strong that they toppled several tractor-trailers.
Experts said it’s not unusual to see such weather extremes in March.
Tornadoes hit amid storm outbreak
The Storm Prediction Center said fast-moving storms could spawn twisters and hail as large as baseballs on Saturday, but the greatest threat would come from winds near or exceeding hurricane force, with gusts of 100 mph (160 kph) possible.
Significant tornadoes continued to hit Saturday. The regions at highest risk stretch from eastern Louisiana and Mississippi through Alabama, western Georgia and the Florida panhandle, the center said.
Bailey Dillon, 24, and her fiance, Caleb Barnes, watched a massive tornado from their front porch in Tylertown, Mississippi, about half a mile (0.8 km) away as it struck an area near Paradise Ranch RV Park.
They drove over afterward to see if anyone needed help and recorded a video depicting snapped trees, leveled buildings and overturned vehicles.
“The amount of damage was catastrophic,” Dillon said. “It was a large amount of cabins, RVs, campers that were just flipped over — everything was destroyed.”
Paradise Ranch reported on Facebook that all its staff and guests were safe and accounted for, but Dillon said the damage extended beyond the ranch itself.
“Homes and everything were destroyed all around it,” she said. “Schools and buildings are just completely gone.”
Some of the imagery from the extreme weather has gone viral.
Tad Peters and his dad, Richard Peters, had pulled over to fuel up their pickup truck in Rolla, Missouri, Friday night when they heard tornado sirens and saw other motorists flee the interstate to park.
“Whoa, is this coming? Oh, it’s here. It’s here,” Tad Peters can be heard saying on a video. “Look at all that debris. Ohhh. My God, we are in a torn ...”
His father then rolled up the truck window. The two were headed to Indiana for a weightlifting competition but decided to turn around and head back home to Norman, Oklahoma, about six hours away, where they encountered wildfires.
Wildfires elsewhere in the Southern Plains threatened to spread rapidly amid warm, dry weather and strong winds in Texas, Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico.
A blaze in Roberts County, Texas, northeast of Amarillo, quickly blew up from less than a square mile (about 2 square kilometers) to an estimated 32.8 square miles (85 square kilometers), the Texas A&M University Forest Service said on X. Crews stopped its advance by Friday evening.
About 60 miles (90 kilometers) to the south, another fire grew to about 3.9 square miles (10 square kilometers) before its advance was halted in the afternoon.
High winds also knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, according the website poweroutage.us.