18 The glaciers in the passage are compared to a machine. A Right B Wrong C Not mentione
18 The glaciers in the passage are compared to a machine.
A Right B Wrong C Not mentioned
18 The glaciers in the passage are compared to a machine.
A Right B Wrong C Not mentioned
Landsat 7 knows that Alaskan glaciers have shrunk because ______.
A.sightseers have noted the changes
B.computer-animated views have shown the shrinkage
C.one of the glaciers was hit by a ship
D.the temperatures are much colder
Part B (10 points)
You are going to read a text about The Big Melt, followed by a list of examples. Choose the best example from the list for each numbered subheading. There is one extra example which you do not need to use.
Say goodbye to the world's tropical glaciers and ice caps. Many will vanish within 20 years. When Lonnie Thompson visited Peru's Quelccaya ice cap in 1977, he couldn't help noticing a school-bus-size boulder that was upended by ice pushing against it. Thompson returned to the same spot last year, and the boulder was still there, but it was lying on its side. The ice that once supported the massive rock had retreated far into the distance, leaving behind a giant lake as it melted away.
Foe Thompson, a geologist with Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center, the rolled-back rock was an obvious sign of climate change in the Andes Mountains. "Observing that over 25 years personally really brings it home", he says. "You don't have to be a believer in global warming to see what's happening."
(41) Thawed ice caps in the tropics.
Quelccaya is the largest ice cap in the tropics, but it isn't the only one that is melting, according to decades of research by Thompson's team. No tropical glaciers are currently known to be advancing, and Thompson predicts that many mountaintops will be completely melted within the next 20 years.
(42) Situation in areas other than the tropics.
The phenomenon isn't confined to the tropics. Glaciers in Europe, Russia, new Zealand, the United States, and elsewhere are also melting.
(43) The worsening effects of global warming.
For many scientists, the widespread melt-down is a clear sign that humans are affecting glottal climate, primarily by raising the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
(44) Receding ice caps.
That's not to say that glaciers, currently found on every continent except Australia, haven't melted in the past as a result of natural variability. These rivers of ice exist in a delicate balance between inputs (accumulating snow and ice) and outputs (melting and "calving" of large chunks of ice). Over time, the balance can tilt in either direction, causing glaciers to advance or retreat. What's different now is the speed at which the scales have tipped. "We've been surprised at how rapid the rate of retreat has been", says Thompson. His team began mapping one of the main glaciers flowing out of the Quelccaya ice cap in 1978, using satellite images and ground surveys.
(45) Thinning ice cores.
And it's not just the margin of the ice cap that is melting. At Quelccaya and Mount Kilimanjaro, the researchers have found that the ice fields are thinning as well. Besides mapping ice caps and glaciers, Thompson and his colleagues have taken core samples from Quelccaya since 1976, when the ice at the drilling location was 154 meters thick.
Thompson and his colleagues have also drilled ice cores from other locations in South America, Africa, and China. Trapped within each of these cores is a climate record spanning more than 8,000 years. It shows that the past 50 years are the warmest in history.
The 4-inch-thick ice cores are now stored in freezers at Ohio State. On the future, says Thompson, that may be the only place to see what's left of the glaciers of Africa and Peru.
A. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, prepared by hundreds of scientists and approved by government delegates from more than 100 nations, states: "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities". The report, released in January, says that the planet's average surface temperature increased by about 0.6℃ during the 20th
Himalaya' s Receding Glaciers
The great majority of the world's glaciers appear to be declining at rates equal to or greater than long-established trends, according to early results from a joint NASA and United States Geological Survey (USGS) project designed to provide a global assessment of glaciers. At the same time, a small minority of glaciers are advancing.
Scientists monitor only a few of India's vital glaciers, which are receding by as much as 100 feet each year.
Billions of people in China and the Indian subcontinent rely on South Asia's Himalayan glaciers the world's largest store of fresh water outside the polar ice caps. The massive ice floes feed seven of the world's greatest Asian rivers in one of the world's most densely populated regions.
Yet as global climate change slowly melts glaciers from Africa to the Andes, scientists say the glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating air a rate of about 33 to 49 feet each year—faster than in any other part of the world.
In the Himalayas, the Gangotri Glacier, one of India's largest, is entitled to an even more dubious distinction. Recent studies reveal that the Gangotri, which forms a mass of ice about 18 miles long, is retreating at a rate of more than 100 feet a year. But according to government officials and environmental groups like Greenpeace, very little has been done in the way of a rigorous scientific study. Scientists are monitoring glacial melting on only a handful of the 7,000 glaciers that cover the Indian Himalayas.
While ice reflects the sun's rays, lake water absorbs and transmits heat more efficiently to the underlying ice, kicking off a feedback that creates further melting. And at such a rapid retreat, a gradual increase in droughts, flash floods, and landslides are not the only issue to worry about, say environmentalists. Glacier changes in the next 100 years could significantly affect agriculture, water supplies, hydroelectric power, transportation, mining, coastlines, and ecological habitats. Just when
power companies are planning more energy sources to power India's growing economy, a rising level of sediment in regional rivers is creating havoc for many grids.
"The power grid in Uttarkashi is constantly breaking down and that's because of the rise in sediment in the water being used at the hydro-power projects," says Joseph Thsetan Gergan from the WADIA Institute of Himalayan Glaciology, a part of the Indian Department of Science and Technology. "When the power breaks down, the people blame the Geological Survey of India or the Central Water Commission for not doing its work properly, but that's like thinking of digging a well when your house is already on fire."
While the Gangotri has been retreating since measurements began in 1842, the rate of retreat, which was around 62 feet per year between 1935 and 1971, has almost doubled. Global warming is causing Himalayan glaciers to rapidly retreat, threatening to cause water shortages for hundreds of millions of people who rely on glacier-dependent rivers in China, India and Nepal. In northwest China, the Qinghai Plateau's wetlands have seen declining lake water levels, lake shrinkage, the absence of water flow in rivers and streams and the degradation of swamp wetlands
An added difficulty, says Mr. Gergan, is the lack of a sustained research effort since the 1970s. The Indian government's own recommendations, issued in March 2002 by the standing committee on Science and Technology, noted that glacial melting required immediate implementation of a program to measure and monitor the changes to the Gangotri and its impact on the Ganges river systems.
"It's not enough to just note the fact that the glaciers are melting," Gergan says. "The impact of that is not being focused on at all." Melting ice may cause serious problems and all these impacts will change with time.
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
The author mainly describes ______ in the article.
A.the creation of glaciers
B.the classification of glaciers
C.the features of glaciers
D.what glaciers are
The glaciers in the passage are compared to a machine.
A.Right
B.Wrong
C.Not mentioned
The glaciers have been entering oceans at a higher rate than before.
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
A.that many sanctuaries were
B.were many sanctuaries
C.were there many sanctuaries
D.there the many sanctuaries
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
The main idea of this passage is ______.
A.the Ice Age was a long period of time
B.great glaciers covered North America many years ago
C.changes in climate helped to melt the glaciers
D.how glaciers changed North America
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