A Second Giant

Asia runs a second monsoon to the east, covering China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Like India's, it has a wet summer, but it adds a sharp dry winter blown in by cold Siberian high pressure.

Japan even has a name for its rainy stretch: tsuyu, the plum rain, weeks of drizzle that feed the rice paddies. Lately this system is drifting north, so cities that rarely flooded now do, while old wet regions face strange droughts.