大学六级-1186及答案解析.doc
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1、大学六级-1186 及答案解析(总分:712.00,做题时间:90 分钟)一、Part Writing(总题数:1,分数:106.00)1. (分数:106.00)_二、Part Reading Compr(总题数:1,分数:70.00)Earth: Melting in the Heat?Glaciers are melting; the ice caps are disappearing into the oceans; sea levels may rise by many meters as a consequence. Indigenous (本土的) Arctic peoples
2、will find their food stocks gone, while fresh water supplies in Asia and south America will disappear as the glaciers which provide them melt away; penguins, polar bears and seals will find their habitats gone, their traditional lives unlivable.But how realistic is this picture? Is the worlds ice re
3、ally disappearing, or is it unscientific hot air?A European satellite named Cryosat was designed to provide definitive answers to some of these questions. A launcher fault destroyed the mission in October 2005, but the European Space Agency has approved a replacement. In the meantime, here is our gl
4、obal snapshot.The AntarcticHuge, pristine (质朴的), dramatic, unforgivingthe Antarctic is where the biggest of all global changes could begin.There is so much ice here that if it all melted, sea levels globally would rise hugelyperhaps as much as 80m. Say goodbye to London, New York, Sydney, Bangkok.in
5、 fact, the majority of the worlds major cities.But will it happen? Scientists divide the Antarctic into three zones: the east and west Antarctic ice sheets; and the Peninsula, the tongue of land which points up towards the southern tip of South America.“Everybody thinks that the Antarctic is shrinki
6、ng due to climate change, but the reality is much more complex,“ says David Vaughan, a principal investigator at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, U.K. “Parts of it appear to be thickening as a result of snowfall increases, but the Peninsula is thinning at an alarming rate due to warming. T
7、he West Antarctic sheet is also thinning, and were not sure of the reason why.“On the UpTemperatures in the Peninsula appear to be increasing at around twice the global averageabout 2 over the last 50 years. Those figures are based on measurements made by instruments at scientific stations.Earlier t
8、his year, David Vaughans group published research showing that the vast majority of glaciers along the Peninsula87% of the 244 studiedare in retreat. The ice dumped into the ocean as the glaciers retreat should not make much difference to global sea levelsperhaps a few centimeters.More worrying, pot
9、entially, are the vast ice sheets covering the rest of Antarctica. Making temperature measurements for the continent as a whole is difficult; it is a vast placemore than 2,000 km acrossthere are few research stations, and temperatures vary naturally by 23 from year to year. But measurements indicate
10、 that in the west, melting is underway.“About one-third of the West Antarctic ice sheet is thinning,“ says Dr. Vaughan, “on average by about 10 cm per year, but in the worst places by 34m per year.“The rock on which the West Antarctic ice rests is below sea level, and British Antarctic Survey resear
11、chers believe the thinning could be due to the ice sheet melting on its underside.“It may be that the ocean is warming and thats causing the ice to melt, but there may be other masons as well; for example, theres lots of volcanism in that area and so that could change how much heat is delivered to t
12、he underside of the ice sheet.“Cryosat should help to pin down what is happening at the West Antarctic fringe. The radar altimeters on board its predecessors ERS1 and ERS2 have been unable to map the steep slopes at the coast, whereas Cryosats instrument should be able to cope.If the entire West Ant
13、arctic ice sheet did melt, sea levels globally would rise, by around 5m. But at the moment, there is no sign of that happening.One recent scientific paper attempted to calculate probabilities for how much West Antarctic melting would contribute to global sea-level rises during this century. The conc
14、lusions: a 30% probability of a 20 cm rise, and a 5% chance of a 1m rise.Eastern MassAnd what of the big monster, the much larger East Antarctic sheet? A recent study using altimeter data suggested it is getting thicker, by about 1.8 cm/yr; another, using the gravity satellite mission Grace indicate
15、s its mass remains stable. But could rising temperatures in time drain the ice away?“It is not going to happen on any realistic human timescale,“ says David Vaughan. “Its so cold that you could raise temperatures by 510 without having much of an impact; its on rock above sea level, so warming in the
16、 ocean cant affect it.“Largely insulated from global trends and so big as to generate its own climatic systems, most of Antarctica appears to be immune to the big melt for now, though answers to what is happening in the west are eagerly awaited.The ArcticAt the top of the world, the Arctic is a regi
17、on built on water. Around the North Pole is ocean, with ice floes crowding in each winter and thinning again in the summers.In September, we learned from scientists at the U.S. National Snow and lee Data Center that the extent of ocean covered by ice is getting smaller each year, the current rate of
18、 shrinkage they calculate at around 8% per decade. Their projection is that within about 60 years, there will be no summer ice at all on the Arctic Ocean.“Overall, the extent has been declining, with some oscillations (摆动), since the 1970s when satellites were able to map it,“ comments Peter Wadhams
19、, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University, U.K., and currently at the Laboratoire Oce anographique in Villefranche-sur-mer, France. “Theres been a slow decline, but now the thinning appears to be more rapid. In the last two decades, not only has the area shrunk but the ice has got thinner
20、 by about 40%; the prediction is that it will vanish altogether during summers in the second half of this century.“Military RecordsMeasurements of thickness come mainly from military submarines, which spent long periods under the Arctic ice during the Cold War.Peter Wadhams was one of the scientists
21、 who afterwards persuaded the authorities in Britain and the United States to declassify their data.But as a method of measurement, it is far from perfect; and satellites have given only limited help. The existing satellite fleet gives good measurements of ice extent, but is not so good at detecting
22、 thickness, partly because the orbits of satellites with radar altimeters do not cover every portion of the ocean.This data deficit has led to a rival theorythat the ice is not melting at all; it is simply piling up in another part of the ocean, perhaps along the north Canadian coast.Peter Wadhams b
23、elieves he has now disproved this idea. “We did an experiment where we installed a set of buoys (浮标) in that region which measure the thickness of the ice and transmit it back via satellite,“ he says. “The buoy sits on the ice, and as waves pass under it they make it rise and fall, just by a millime
24、ter or two; measuring this allows you to calculate the thickness of the ice.“The preliminary results, announced at a scientific meeting in April 2005, show that the extra ice is not them; it really has melted away.Wider ImpactTo people living in the region, the melting brings mixed news. Current lif
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