The Agriculture Department will have to deal with droughts and
changing rainfall
patterns, but its employees have been barred from even
discussing the problem openly, as leadership has instructed them to use «
weather extremes» instead of «climate
change» in reports.
As suggested by the 15 - day forecast from early August (
discussed in the August Outlook report), the
weather pattern for August completely
changed from the
pattern of June and July, decreasing the chance of a record September sea ice loss for 2009.
This report
discusses our current understanding of the mechanisms that link declines in Arctic sea ice cover, loss of high - latitude snow cover,
changes in Arctic - region energy fluxes, atmospheric circulation
patterns, and the occurrence of extreme
weather events; possible implications of more severe loss of summer Arctic sea ice upon
weather patterns at lower latitudes; major gaps in our understanding, and observational and / or modeling efforts that are needed to fill those gaps; and current opportunities and limitations for using Arctic sea ice predictions to assess the risk of temperature / precipitation anomalies and extreme
weather events over northern continents.