ULAN BATOR, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- All but one of Mongolia's 21 provinces have been experiencing the extreme weather "dzud" this winter, the country's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said Thursday.

"A total of 166 soums (administrative subdivisions) of 20 provinces are now experiencing the dzud," NEMA said in a statement.

Dzud is a Mongolian term to describe a severely cold winter when many livestock die because the ground is frozen or covered by snow.

Around 90 percent of the Mongolian territory has so far been covered with snow of up to 37 cm thick, said the country's weather monitoring agency on Thursday.

The livestock sector is a central pillar of the Mongolian economy. The country's total livestock population stood at 64.7 million at the end of 2023, down 9.1 percent from the previous year due to extreme weather.

Mongolia's climate is strongly continental with long, frigid winters and short summers.

In December, overnight temperatures plummeted to minus 50 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country. Enditem

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