首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. IT WAS the summer, scientists n
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. IT WAS the summer, scientists n
admin
2015-03-03
24
问题
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
IT WAS the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself unmistakably felt. We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clear.
The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as in Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way. Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78°C above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit(CRU)of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world’s leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records.
That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context — but then you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director, is prepared to say openly — in a way few scientists have done before — that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.
Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are "consistent with predictions" of climate change. For the great block of the map — that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E — the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the temperature norm, or "anomalies", over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature — the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years — approaching, or even exceeding, 2°C. But there has been nothing remotely like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.
"This is quite remarkable," Professor Jones told The Independent "It’s very unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldn’t get this number. The return period[how often it could be expected to recur]would be something like one in a thousand years. If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we’ve seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human actions."
The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later the unprecedented hot summer was bound to come, and this year it did.
One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 23°C(73.4°F)at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.5°C(77.9°F). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with a lowest figure of 27.6°C(80.6°F)on 13 August, and similar record-breaking nighttime temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.
The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by about 5°C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged 75-94.
For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself — defined as the June, July and August period — still comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat. At the moment, the year is on course to be the third-hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002, but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second place, Professor Jones said. The 10 hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European summer of 2003. "The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record," he said. "It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that. It was enormously exceptional."
His colleagues at the University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are now planning a special study of it. "It was a summer that has not been experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat," said the centres executive director, Professor Mike Hulme.
"It will certainly have left its mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods have revolutionised the way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. "The 2003 heatwave will have similar repercussions across Europe."
Questions 14-19
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
Governments are building new high-altitude ski resorts.
选项
A、Yes
B、No
C、Not Given
答案
C
解析
利用细节信息“ski resorts”定位于第六段倒数第二句话“…winter sports would dieout in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts”。原文只说低海拔的滑雪胜地的冬季运动会消失,但是是否会修建高海拔的滑雪胜地并没有提及。题目中出现原文未提及的细节信息或概念,所以选择Not Given。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/qcEYFFFM
本试题收录于:
雅思阅读题库雅思(IELTS)分类
0
雅思阅读
雅思(IELTS)
相关试题推荐
A、Theinfluenceofvolcaniceruptionsonglobalweatherpatternsisalmostcompletelyunderstoodatpresent.B、Scientistshaveo
A、ProvidespecificexamplesoftheproblemsinhistoriographyB、Describesomeofthecriteriaemployedindeterminingwhatmakes
ThoughaleadingauthorityonRomanticliterature,thechairpersonisaspeakerwhoselecturesoneventhemostexcitingliterar
Theprimaryimpulseofeachhumanbeingisto______himself,butthesecondaryimpulseistoventureoutoftheself,tocorrect
Itisoddthatmanyphilosophersargueinsupportofmeritocracythataperson’sworthtosocietyismeasuredbytheirwealth,w
Akeyfeatureofquantuminformationscienceistheunderstandingthatgroupsoftwoormorequantumobjectscanhavesta
Societyisgenerallyamenabletosubsidizingscience’sexpensivemachinery,whichatsomepointwillprovidecivilizatio
Howisanewbornstarformed?Fortheanswertothisquestion,wemustlooktothefamiliarphysicalconceptofgravitat
Recentdatarecordingabottlenosewhale’sphenomenaldiveofover4700feet(i)______earlier(ii)______thatsuchwhaleswerea
随机试题
关于单克隆丙种球蛋白病不正确的是
蛔虫卵对外界环境抵抗力强的原因是()
患者无眩晕、无听力障碍和肌力完好,出现右上肢指鼻试验不正确和轮替动作差,右下肢跟膝胫试验差。病损部位在
2010年8月20日,甲公司与乙公司签订了购销合同,约定由甲公司提供6台德国产接触器,单价10万元,总金额为60万元,预付款为4万元,其余款项在收到货物后15日内付清;合同生效后30日内交货,甲公司负责运输,乙公司决定运输方式(如乙公司不指定,则默认为中铁
以下提法( )是正确的。
岩性一般较单一,以中、粗粒结构为主,致密坚硬,孔隙率小,透水性弱,抗水性强而常被选为理想的建筑基础的是()。
填石渗沟、管式渗沟和洞式渗沟均应设置()。
某银行股份公司主要经营存、贷款业务,并提供其他金融服务,2009年第二季度发生了以下几笔业务:(1)“其他贷款利息收入”130万元,其中票据贴现贷款利息收入30万元;“金融机构往来利息收入”账户反映同业往来利息收入25万元;(2)本期取
我国某企业2016年度实现收入总额460万元,与之相应的扣除项目金额共计438万元,经税务机关核定2015年度的亏损额为20万元。该企业2016年度应缴纳的企业所得税为()元。
下列哪项不是市场风险的特征()。
最新回复
(
0
)