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Weekly Updates: Africa | Asia | Latin America

22 November 2010

Asia Update #4

Not very much going on right now in Asia. Typical weather continues across southern and eastern portions of Asia. The first strong front will move through central Asia later this week, although most of the precipitation will fall as rain because of how high temperatures still are. The most significant events right now are occurring in Vietnam, with continued heavy rainfall and Turkey, which is in a bit of a dry spell.

 On the Korean peninsula, the growing season has ended on a dry note. Although the dryness likely facilitated crop harvesting in North Korea, it also may limit water availability during the winter. We will have to wait and see what kind of precipitation falls during the coming months.




The rain has been relentless across Southeast Asia. The ongoing La Nina has dumped excessive moisture across Laos, Cambodia Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. No country, however, has directly contended with the kind of flooding that has inundated Vietnam for the last couple of months. Much of the region has experienced a bit of a break during the last couple of weeks, with one exception. Vietnam, again this week got hit with some high rainfall totals. Although this weeks rainfall does not appear to have caused additional flooding, the precipitation is still unwelcome.
Dryness continues to spread outward from Turkey as deficits continue to rise. For two weeks dry weather, centered on Turkey, has quickly radiated outward. A region stretching from southeastern Europe down through Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel,  northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and into the Caucus region. These deficits would be easy to reverse, however, water is a precious commodity in this part of the world and any reduction in rainfall is worth taking note of.

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