《泛读教育资料4-IsWeatherGettingWorse》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《泛读教育资料4-IsWeatherGettingWorse（9页珍藏版）》请在金锄头文库上搜索。
1、/Is Weather Getting Worse? Weather seems getting worse and wilder since Mother Nature is full of surprises these days. Global warming, a heated topic of today, is often taken for granted to be responsible for the harsh weather. However, scientists, like Kevin E. Trenberth, are cautious in making the
2、ir judgment. Please read the following article and find out what role El Nio and La Nia play. As you read this, flip your eyes over to the window. The sky is clear, the wind light, and the sun brilliant. Or maybe not Mother Nature is full of surprises these days. The calendar says its spring, but th
3、ere could just as easily be a winter blizzard, a summer swelter, or an autumn cold snap on the other side of that glass pane. Almost in an instant, it seems, the weather shifts from one season to another. And wherever it swings, it seems increasingly likely to be extreme. Consider what Mother Nature
4、 slung our way last year in May, typically the second worst month for tornadoes. In less than 24 hours, more than 70 hellholes of wind rampaged through Oklahoma and Kansas, killing 49 and causing more than $1 billion in damages. In June, it was heat, as the Northeast began roasting through weeks of
5、the worst drought since the 1960s; 256 people died. This year in January, blizzards pounded the U.S. from Kansas to the Atlantic Ocean. In April, 25 inches of snow fell on parts of New England. Why has our weather gone wild? Its the question everyones asking, but a very tough one to answer. Although
6、 many scientists still arent convinced that it has gone wild, some have begun saying cautiously, hesitantly that extreme weather events are occurring with more frequency than at any time in this century, events consistent with the profile of a warming world. Global warming is real, says Kevin E. Tre
7、nberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The mean temperatures are going up. The key question is: What will it do locally? I think were going to start feeling its effects in the changes on extremes. That doesnt mean you can indict weir
8、d weather in your neck of the woods as proof. Mother Nature knows how to hide her tracks. She hurls a torrential downpour today and a drought tomorrow followed by gentle rain the next week. To understand a pattern in natural variability, you cant look into the sky; you have got to study data. And fo
9、r a host of reasons, that isnt easy. But tallying up the damage is. In the last 20 years, this country has been whacked by $I70 billion worth of weather-related disasters hurricanes, droughts, floods, and tornadoes. Thirty-eight severe weather events occurred in a single decade, between 1988 and 199
10、9; seven events occurred in 1998 alone the most for any year on record. Globally, insurance companies are calling it a catastrophe trend. In a report issued last December, Munich Re, the worlds largest reinsurer, or insurer of insurance companies, noted that the number of natural disasters has incre
11、ased more than fourfold since the 1950s. Earthquakes, which are not weather-related, caused nearly half the deaths in those catastrophes; storms, floods, and other weather woes killed the other half. In 1999, the number of catastrophes worldwide hit 755, surpassing the record of 702 set only the yea
12、r before. In its five-point list of causes for increased damage claims, Munich Re blamed population growth first, climate change fifth. Critics may well seize upon this to diminish claims that the weather is getting worse, but taken together, its a more frightening picture. Thanks to swelling popula
13、tions in cities and along coastal areas, more of Earths passengers are living in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, the statistics meteorologists have collected on extreme weather events arent enough to prove that the weather is getting worse. By their very definition, extreme events happen i
14、nfrequently, and no one has been collecting scientifically sound data long enough to know how common they are. For example, a storm that happens once a century might require two millennias worth of storm data to draw conclusions. To top it off, the computer models scientists use to study climate cru
15、nch numbers on a scale of centuries at a time. Ideally, youd like data sets that go back several hundred years, says Philip Arkin, deputy director of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. But they just dont exist. The U.S. da
16、ta go back 50 years. Before World War II, its very difficult to come up with good numbers. We have some data on heavy rain events before 1900, but theres nothing useful. Even if scientists could find good numbers, computer resolution is still too coarse to be able to forecast how something as simple as warming might affect climate in specific spots on the globe. The smallest amount of space on lan
