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1、2010.06.15 Thinning on top“稀”想顶层 - 专栏 Columns - 经济学人 经济学人|经济 学家 - Powered by Discuz!注册成为 ECOer 登录 每周选题新手报到公告栏通天塔各地联谊搜索 Blog 默认 blue 风格 jeansfashionfervorgreenwalluchome2009christmas 私人消息 (0)公共消息 (0)系统消息 (0)好友消息 (0)帖子消息 (0)应用通知 (0)应用邀请 (0)经 济学人 专栏 Columns 2010.06.15 Thinning on top“稀”想顶层 新手必读 TE 译文规范
2、 | ECO 英语沙龙 ECO 招聘启事 译文奖励计划“通天塔”TE 授权声明 | QQ 第 30 群 腾讯微博订阅 The Economist返回列表 发帖 suezhang815 发短消息 加为好友 suezhang815 当前在线 UID90812 帖子 12 主题 0 精华 0 积分 0 积累 0 点 现金 0 GBP 原创译作 0 篇 本周之星 0 次 奖励译文 0 次 来源朋友推荐 阅读权限 10 在线时间 3 小时 注册时间 2010-2-28 最后登录 2010-6-22 初级士官帖子 12 积分 0 原创译作 0 篇 注册时间 2010-2-28 1 楼 跳转到 倒序看帖 打
3、印 字体大小: tT 发表于 昨天 05:52 | 只看该作者 Green.view 2010.06.15 Thinning on top“稀”想顶层本帖最后由 suezhang815 于 2010-6-21 16:25 编辑 囧死，翻完了发现在专栏发不了贴。麻烦哪位版主大哥帮我转一下帖子并赐我 权限吧。顺便问下，Word 的格式可以直接导入吗？Thinning on top“稀”想顶层Predicting the Arctics summer fate is not so simple北极今夏命运难料Jun 15th 2010MARCH is the maximum month. In Ma
4、rch 1979, the first year for which satellite records are available, the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean covered 16.4m square kilometres (6.4m square miles). By the time summer was gone, the ice was down to about 7.2m square kilometres. Every March since, the ice has returned to an annual maximum, but ne
5、ver again has it been as large as the one observed that first year. Every summer, it shrinks back down, and the minimum has for the most part been getting smaller and smaller. In 2007 it was just 4.3m square kilometres. At first, polar scientists watched the planets icy pulse with academic interest
6、and justifiable pride in their new observational capabilities. Now they monitor its every hiccup as if it were a patient on life support. But that does not mean they know how to interpret what they see.三月，满满之月。1979 年 3 月，卫星摄影技术发明之初，北冰洋海域覆盖着 1640 万平方公里（640 万平方英里）的冰层。夏末时节，冰层减小至 720 万平方公里。此后 的每年 3 月，冰层
7、最盛，但再也没有达到过初次记录值。每年夏天，冰层则会缩减。每年的 最小观测值与“年”俱“减”2007 年，仅为 430 万平方公里。起初，极地学家们观测 冰层的周期变化时，除了带着学术热情，还饱含着全新观测手段的自豪。而如今，北极冰层 的些微变化，都让他们小心翼翼，一如监护带着呼吸机的病人般。但是，连他们也不知道， 该如何解释他们的观测结果。This year they noted that the Arctic ice cap had a late-winter growth spurt, reaching its maximum on March 31st, the latest date
8、 ever recorded. By the beginning of June, the ice coveras defined by the percentage of ocean covered by at least 15% floating icehad dropped far below what is usual for the time of year. Both observations, by themselves, sound as if they should contain meaningful information about what to expect in
9、the rest of 2010. They dont.Or at least, if they do, no one knows how to extract it. Every month between June and September, the environmental arctic change programme of Americas Arctic Research Consortium releases a “sea ice outlook” in which teams of researchers estimate how much ice will be left
10、by September. The 2010 numbers are expected to become public in the next week or two.今年，他们观测到，北冰洋的冰层在冬末时节加速生长，至 3 月 31 日方达最 大值，这是有记录以来最晚的一次。6 月初，覆冰率（定义为洋面浮冰率 15%以上的水域比 例）远低于常年水平。这两个观测结果听上饱含有助 2010 年度预测的有用信息，其实不然。 或者说，即使如此，也无人能解。6 月至 9 月的每个月份，美国北冰洋研究协会 （Americas Arctic Research Consortium）的北冰洋环境变化项目都
11、会发布名为“海洋浮 冰观测” （sea ice outlook）的报告，由研究团队预测到 9 月底的冰层面积。2010 年的预测值有 望在最近一周或两周内向公众宣布。In 2009 more than a dozen teams took on the challenge, and all of them failed to one degree or another. The group that came the closest to predicting the September sea-ice minimum (which was 5.36m square kilometres) w
12、as the one from the University of Washington, which had the figure chalked in as 5.2m square kilometres, overestimating the extent of the melting by an area five times that of Belgium. The University of Washingtons team made that prediction by “heuristic reasoning”aka educated guesswork. The teams t
13、hat relied more on modelling the processes involved, or on statistics from years gone by, did worse. All the teams overestimated the ice loss, some of them by more than 1m square kilometres.2009 年，超过 12 支队伍加入了挑战，每支队伍，或多或少都失败了。预测 “9 月冰层最小面积” （实为 536 万平方公里）得到最接近值的队伍来自华盛顿大学，预测 值为 520 万平方公里。他们预测的冰层融化面积，
14、是来自比利时队伍的五倍之多。华盛顿大 学的这支队伍的预测来自“启发式推理”也就是瞎蒙。那些基于模型演算或历年数据的队 伍，估值比这支队来得都要离谱。所有的队伍都高估了冰层融化面积，有些队伍甚至超过了 百万平方公里。Will it ever be possible to model Arctic sea-ice decline accurately? One bedevilling factor is that weather plays an outsize role in sea-ice conditions. A couple of high winds here, an abnormal
15、 cold snap there, and ice cover that had looked fragile can suddenly appear robust. Last summer the weather in August and September was dramatically different from that in June and July, when the initial predictions were made, which probably partly explains why everyone overestimated the extent of t
16、he melt. The record-breaking low in 2007 came in large part from a pattern of atmospheric highs that settled over the central Arctic, with winds pushing ice away from the Siberian coast and sending warmer temperatures coursing northward. Weather patterns such as this simply cannot be understood well enough months in advance to help inform sea-ice predictions.建立北冰洋冰层融化的数理模型，究竟有无可能？一个磨人的因素，就是天气 似乎只起着外部作用。虽然这厢刮个大风，那厢温度骤降，但那些看似脆弱的冰层却似乎不 受影响。去年夏天八九月的天气与做出预测的六七月时迥
