page_title: Yunnan
section_title: Climate
hierarchical_section_title: Yunnan / Geography / Climate
caption_attribution_description: lashi wetland (拉市海湿地), 丽江, Yunnan China. Taken by Ariel Steiner.
context_page_description: Yunnan is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately 394,000 square kilometres and has a population of 48.300 million. The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan, autonomous regions of Guangxi, and Tibet as well as Southeast Asian countries: Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar. Yunnan is China's fourth least developed province based on disposable income per capita in 2014.
  Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with high elevations in the northwest and low elevations in the southeast. Most of the population lives in the eastern part of the province. In the west, the altitude can vary from the mountain peaks to river valleys by as much as 3,000 metres. Yunnan is rich in natural resources and has the largest diversity of plant life in China. Of the approximately 30,000 species of higher plants in China, Yunnan has perhaps 17,000 or more. Yunnan's reserves of aluminium, lead, zinc and tin are the largest in China, and there are also major reserves of copper and nickel.
context_section_description: Yunnan has a generally mild climate with pleasant and fair weather because of the province's location on south-facing mountain slopes, receiving the influence of both the Pacific and Indian oceans, and although the growing period is long, the rugged terrain provides little arable land. See Agriculture in Yunnan. Under the Köppen climate classification, much of the province lies within the subtropical highland (Köppen Cwb) or humid subtropical zone (Cwa), with mild to warm winters, and temperate summers, except in the almost tropical to truly tropical south, where temperatures regularly exceed 30 °C (86 °F) in the warmer half of the year. In general, January average temperatures range from 8 to 17 °C (46 to 63 °F); July averages vary from 21 to 27 °C (70 to 81 °F). Average annual rainfall ranges from 600 to 2,300 millimetres (24 to 91 in), with over half the rain occurring between June and August. The plateau region has moderate temperatures. The western canyon region is hot at the valley bottoms, but there are freezing winds at the mountaintops.
caption: Erhai Lake, Dali, Yunnan
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