RAINFALL. In most. regions of Asia, except near the Pacific coast and south of the Hima layas, the rainfall is scanty. On the immediate coast of the Arctic Ocean in Siberia, the animal precipitation is muter ten inches. Elsewhere in Siberia it is between ten and twenty inches.
In the great desert regions of Gobi, the Caspian and Aral Sea regions, and in Persia, it is below ten inches. In most of Arabia it is below ten inches, except in the higher plateau of the in terior, where it reaches twenty inches. In Manchuria the rainfall increases to 30 inches, and in China it increases southward from 30 inches in the north to 40 inches at the mouth of the Hoang, to 70 inches in the southern part, and is SO inches in Japan. The Malay Peninsula has an excessive rainfall. In the Himalaya re gion the rainfall on the southern slopes some times amounts to over 160 inches, in one limited region to 475 inches, and for much of the south eastern coast region of India it reaches from 120 to 160 inches; hut it decreases very rapidly west of Calcutta, and on most of the Deccan Plateau it is only 20 inches, increasing again on the western coast to from 40 to 160 inches. The
heaviest annual rainfall in the world occurs in Assam, to the south of the eastern Himalayas, where a precipitation of SOO inches is on record. While the normal rainfall for southern Asia may he estimated at from 40 to 60 inches, yet wher ever a mountain range intercepts the moist winds blowing from the Indian Ocean, a rainfall of from 140 to 160 inches occurs on the windward side of the mountains, and usually of from 20 to 40 inches on the leeward side. Northern Asia has rain at all seasons, except in the deserts, where rain seldom falls. Southern Asia, includ ing India and the Malay Peninsula, is subjected to periodic rains, the maximmn occurring in summer, the period of the southwest monsoons.