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  3. Global warming, after all, isn’t just about hotter summers. As the earth’s temperatures rise, scientists speculate, there will b

Global warming, after all, isn’t just about hotter summers. As the earth’s temperatures rise, scientists speculate, there will b

admin2012-07-11  59
问题     Global warming, after all, isn’t just about hotter summers. As the earth’s temperatures rise, scientists speculate, there will be a lot more than warming going on. The change in ocean temperatures and sea levels will affect everything from rain patterns to wind direction. But how much of that is already happening, and how much is speculation?
    Though we’ve seen increasingly unusual weather patterns in recent years,it’s important to separate individual instances of extreme weather from the broader category of climate change. Those heavy snows from last winter, according to researchers at Columbia University, were the result of two large colliding weather fronts—probably just a natural aberration (越轨), rather than necessarily a symptom of climate change. And tornado in Brooklyn was definitely bizarre—it occurred not only in a part of the country not known for touchdowns,but also during an unusual time of day and season and in the midst of a regional drought. However,it can’t be precisely pinned on global warming.
    Still,recent research has begun to show that at least in some cases, those altered and extreme weather patterns can be definitively linked to global warming. A just-released analysis by researchers at Duke University shows that’s the case for summertime weather in the southeastern United States. Eleven of the past 30 summers were either abnormally wet or abnormally dry in the Southeastern states. And there were twice as many instances of " extreme" rainfall as there had been compared to the rainfall during the 30 preceding summers. Summer weather in that part of the country—along with that of the entire eastern U. S. .Western Europe,and North Africa,is influenced by the North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH) ,a high-pressure system that has intensified an average of 0.9 geo-potential meters (位势 米) every decade over the past 60 years.
    In layman’s terms,that means that the system extended higher and higher above sea level,making NASH more powerful. And its reach extended in other ways too; the area of the system grew, meaning that it came westward, closer to the eastern coast of the United States, and also increased its north-south movement. But slight shifts in NASH’s path can have a big impact;If NASH goes slightly more northward than usual，it can make for a dry summer; southward, and the summer is an extremely wet one. Researchers at Duke say they thoroughly investigated naturally occurring phenomena for the growth of NASH,but found no seemingly reasonable explanations. They concluded that the change is a result of alterations to the climate that were caused by humans.
    More dramatic are the claims that global warming could bring about or aggravate civil wars in Africa because of agricultural resources scarcity. That may or may not come about, but the broader lesson seems to be that even if science hasn’t yet formally connected all the dots on climate change,we should expect the unexpected.
What can we learn about tornado in Brooklyn according to Paragraph 2?
选项 A、It was the result of two large colliding cold fronts.
B、It occurred in a place where tornado scarcely occurs.
C、It occurred in an unusual rainy season.
D、It was strange and caused by global warming.
答案B
解析 事实细节题。定位句指出，布鲁克林龙卷风显得非常奇怪，它不仅仅出现在国内龙卷风罕至的地区，还出现在一个不寻常的时间和季节里，龙卷风来临时那个地区正经历着干旱。因此，B)“它发生在龙卷风罕至的地区”，与原文相符，故为本题答案。A)“它是两大冷锋交汇的结果”，原文并未提及，故排除；C)“它发生在一个很不寻常的雨季”，原文指出龙卷风来临时那个地区正经历着干旱，该选项错误，故排除；D)“它发生得很奇怪，是由全球变暖引起的”与原文第二段最后一句意思不符，故排除。
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