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  3. The 17 trillion US gallons of rain, roughly 26m Olympic swimming pools, dumpe

The 17 trillion US gallons of rain, roughly 26m Olympic swimming pools, dumpe

游客2023-08-14  6
问题    The 17 trillion US gallons of rain, roughly 26m Olympic swimming pools, dumped on Texas by Hurricane Harvey has set a new high for a tropical system in the US, but it is unlikely to last long as rising man-made emissions push the global climate deeper into uncharted territory.
   Images of flooded streets in Texas are mirrored by scenes of inundated(洪泛的)communities in India and Bangladesh, the recent mudslides in Sierra Leone and last month’s deadly overflow of a Yangtze tributary(支流)in China. In part, these calamities are seasonal. In part, the impact depends on local factors. But scientists tell us such extremes are likely to become more common and more devastating as a result of rising global temperatures and increasingly intense rainfall.
   Our planet is in an era of unwelcome records. For each of the past three years, temperatures have hit peaks not seen since the birth of meteorology(气象学), and probably not for more than 110,000 years. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air is at its highest level in 4m years. This does not cause storms like Harvey—there have always been storms and hurricanes at this time of year along the Gulf of Mexico—but it makes them wetter and more powerful.
   " For large countries like the United States, we can expect further rainfall records—and not just for hurricanes," said Friederike Otto, deputy director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. This is part of a wider trend. "For the globe, we’ll see heat and extreme rainfall records fall for the foreseeable future," she predicted. She cautioned that the situation is likely to be different from country to country. Many factors are involved, but human impact on the climate has added to the tendency for more severe droughts and fiercer storms.
   A key focus now is whether climate change is connected to the " stalling" of storms. In the US, hurricanes usually move inland and diminish in power as they get further from the sea. Harvey, however, was stationary for several days—which is the main factor in its rainfall record.
   Scientists have said this may be the single biggest question posed by Harvey. Researchers have recently identified a slowdown of atmospheric summer circulation in the mid-latitudes as a result of strong warming in the Arctic. But such studies of pressure patterns need more powerful analytical tools, including supercomputers.
   In the US, however, such research has become highly politicised. President Donald Trump has announced that the US will pull out of the Paris climate treaty and cut funding for related research. " It shouldn’t be a political matter to try to understand how much more frequent events like Harvey will become in the future," said Tim Palmer, a professor at the University of Oxford. "It appalls me how basic science has become involved in politics like this. " [br] It is suggested that the root cause of the "stalling" of storms might be______.
选项 A、varied pressure patterns
B、warmer ocean currents
C、improper human activities
D、slower atmospheric circulation
答案 C
解析 推理判断题。本题考查对异常天气产生原因的分析。定位句提到，气候变化可能与风暴的“驻留”有关，第六段第二句说明，中纬度地区夏季气流缓滞的原因就是北冰洋的升温，而第四段末句指出，尽管极端天气可能与诸多因素有关，但是人类活动对气候的影响加重了灾害。由此可推知，风暴“驻留”造成极端天气的现象，其根本原因有可能就是不恰当的人类活动，故答案为C)。A)“改变的气压结构”，根据第六段可知，风暴驻留就是一种大气压结构的变化，不是其根本原因，故排除；B)“更加温暖的洋流”是其直接原因，并非根本原因，故排除；D)“更迟缓的大气循环”也就是作者所说的夏季气流缓滞或者是风暴的“驻留”，并非其成因．故排除。
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