泛读教育资料4-IsWeatherGettingWorse.doc
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1、/IsIs WeatherWeather GettingGetting Worse?Worse? Weather seems getting worse and wilder since “Mother Nature is full of surprises these days“. Global warming, a heated topic of today, is often taken for granted to be responsible for the harsh weather. However, scientists, like Kevin E. Trenberth, ar
2、e cautious in making their judgment. Please read the following article and find out what role El Nio and La Nia play. As you read this, flip your eyes over to the window. The sky is clear, the wind light, and the sun brilliant. Or maybe not Mother Nature is full of surprises these days. The calendar
3、 says its spring, but there could just as easily be a winter blizzard, a summer swelter, or an autumn cold snap on the other side of that glass pane. Almost in an instant, it seems, the weather shifts from one season to another. And wherever it swings, it seems increasingly likely to be extreme.Cons
4、ider what Mother Nature slung our way last year in May, typically the second worst month for tornadoes. In less than 24 hours, more than 70 hellholes of wind rampaged through Oklahoma and Kansas, killing 49 and causing more than $1 billion in damages. In June, it was heat, as the Northeast began roa
5、sting through weeks of the worst drought since the 1960s; 256 people died. This year in January, blizzards pounded the U.S. from Kansas to the Atlantic Ocean. In April, 25 inches of snow fell on parts of New England. Why has our weather gone wild? Its the question everyones asking, but a very tough
6、one to answer. Although many scientists still arent convinced that it has gone wild, some have begun saying cautiously, hesitantly that extreme weather events are occurring with more frequency than at any time in this century, events consistent with the profile of a warming world. “Global warming is
7、 real,“ says Kevin E. Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the Center 课文一课文一天气正越变越糟?天气正越变越糟?因为“这些日子大自然母亲充满着意想不到的事情”,看起来天气在越变越糟,越来越狂野。全球变暖是现在的热门话题,常常理所当然地被看成恶劣气候的罪魁祸首。但是,凯文E川伯斯这样的科学家在下定论时态度谨慎。请阅读以下文章,看一看厄尔尼诺和拉尼娜现象所起的作用。当你阅读本文时,请把目光轻快地投向窗外。天空澄净,微风轻拂,日光明媚。也许并不是这样这些日子, 大自然母亲充满着意想不到的事情。日历上说
8、现在是春天,但窗外完全可能是一场冬季的暴风雪,一阵夏日的酷暑或一股秋天的寒流。几乎是在一瞬之间,气候就好象从一个季节转到了另一个季节。而且不管天气转向何方,它看起来变得越来越极端。想想看去年五月大自然母亲都给我们带来了些什么,那是第二个遭受龙卷风袭击最严重的月份。在不到二十四小时之内,七十多个“地狱”风暴在俄克拉何马和堪萨斯州横行肆虐,造成 49 人死亡以及十多亿美元的损失。六月,天气酷热,东北部连续几周在热浪下炙烤,遭受了自六十年代以来最严重的旱情,256 人丧生。今年一月,暴风雪横扫美国,从堪萨斯州直至大西洋沿岸。四月,新英格兰部分地区下的雪厚达二十五英 吋。为什么我们的天气变得如此狂野?
9、这是每个人都在问的问题,但是很难回答。虽然许多科学家仍然不相信天气已经失控,但有些人虽然态度谨慎,仍存疑虑已经开始说,与本世纪任何时段相比,极端性天气出/for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. “The mean temperatures are going up. The key question is: What will it do locally? I think were going to start feeling its effects in the changes on extremes.“That doesnt mean
10、you can indict weird weather in your neck of the woods as proof. Mother Nature knows how to hide her tracks. She hurls a torrential downpour today and a drought tomorrow followed by gentle rain the next week. To understand a pattern in natural variability, you cant look into the sky; you have got to
11、 study data. And for a host of reasons, that isnt easy. But tallying up the damage is. In the last 20 years, this country has been whacked by $I70 billion worth of weather-related disasters hurricanes, droughts, floods, and tornadoes. Thirty-eight severe weather events occurred in a single decade, b
12、etween 1988 and 1999; seven events occurred in 1998 alone the most for any year on record. Globally, insurance companies are calling it a “catastrophe trend“. In a report issued last December, Munich Re, the worlds largest reinsurer, or insurer of insurance companies, noted that the number of natura
13、l disasters has increased more than fourfold since the 1950s. Earthquakes, which are not weather-related, caused nearly half the deaths in those catastrophes; storms, floods, and other weather woes killed the other half. In 1999, the number of catastrophes worldwide hit 755, surpassing the record of
14、 702 set only the year before. In its five-point list of causes for increased damage claims, Munich Re blamed population growth first, climate change fifth. Critics may well seize upon this to diminish claims that the weather is getting worse, but taken together, its a more frightening picture. Than
15、ks to swelling populations in cities and along coastal areas, more of Earths passengers are living in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, the statistics meteorologists have collected on extreme weather events arent enough 现的频率愈加频繁,这与全球变暖的量变曲线是吻合的。凯文E川伯斯是设在科罗拉多州博耳德市的大气研究中心气候分析部的主任,他说:“全球变暖是事实。”
16、“平均气温在上升。但关键问题是,它会给具体地区带来什么?我认为我们已开始感受到它的影响,天气的变化趋于极端。”这并不意味着你可以用某一有限区域的怪异天气作为控诉的证据。大自然母亲知道该如何隐藏她的行踪。她今天猛地来一场倾盆大雨,明天是干旱,紧接着是一周柔柔细雨。你不能靠察看天象来了解自然变化的模式,你必须得研究数据。但由于种种原因,这并不容易。 但是计算一下灾害损失却是容易的。过去的二十年里,我们这个国家与气候相关的灾难飓风、干旱、洪水及龙卷风造成了高达一千七百亿美元的损失。仅 1988 年至 1999年这十年间就发生了 38 起严重的气候事件,仅 1998 年就有 7 起气候事件,这是有史以
17、来受灾最多的一年。 从全球范围来看,保险公司把天气变暖称为“灾难趋势”。世界最大的再保险商,即为保险公司提供保险的墨尼黑再保险公司在去年十二月份发行的一份报告中指出,自 20 世纪 50年代以来,自然灾害的数量已经增长了四倍有余。在这些灾难中,和气候无关的地震造成了近一半人的死亡;风暴、洪灾以及其它气候性灾难夺去了另一半人的生命。1999 年,全世界的灾难数目达到 755 起, 超过前一年才创下的 702 起的记录。 墨尼黑再保险公司在其列出的索赔要求日益增加的五点原因,认为人口增长首当其冲,天气变化则列在第五。一些批评家也许会紧抓住这一点/to prove that the weather
18、is getting worse. By their very definition, extreme events happen infrequently, and no one has been collecting scientifically sound data long enough to know how common they are. For example, a storm that happens once a century might require two millennias worth of storm data to draw conclusions. To
19、top it off, the computer models scientists use to study climate crunch numbers on a scale of centuries at a time. “Ideally, youd like data sets that go back several hundred years,“ says Philip Arkin, deputy director of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction at the Lamont-Doherty
20、 Earth Observatory in New York. “But they just dont exist. The U.S. data go back 50 years. Before World War II, its very difficult to come up with good numbers. We have some data on heavy rain events before 1900, but theres nothing useful.“Even if scientists could find good numbers, computer resolut
21、ion is still too coarse to be able to forecast how something as simple as warming might affect climate in specific spots on the globe. The smallest amount of space on land, sea, ice, and air that scientists can study is about the size of Virginia. If they crank up the resolution by 50 percent to foc
22、us on an area half that size, they pay for it in computing time a calculation that took 10 days to perform might now need three months. Keith Dixon, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey, recalls once he w
23、as being asked precisely what global warming would mean for state ski resorts. More snow? (Good.) Or more rain? (Bad.) “I can understand why businesspeople or politicians ask. If you want to cut fuel, spend money, and make decisions, you need to know why you should be doing this.“ Adds his colleague
24、, Tom Knutson: “I can certainly sympathize with them. But we cant answer it.“Since 1995, the literature has suggested that there could be fewer frosts, more heat waves, more 来 轻视天气正越变越糟的观点,但综合起来考虑,这是幅更可怕的画面。幸亏人口增长主要在城市和沿海地区,更多的“地球过客们”是在不适当的时间住在了不适当的地方。 尽管这样,气象学家收集的有关极端性气候事件的统计数据,还不足以证实天气正越变越糟。根据他们的定
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