题型:阅读理解 题类:模拟题 难易度:普通
黑龙江省齐齐哈尔市2021届高三下学期英语第三次模拟试卷
Despite being the highest point on Earth, Mount Everest can't escape the effects of climate change. According to two new studies published in iScience and One Earth, the air pressure near Everest's top is rising, and the rate of glacier melt (冰川融化) is faster.
Last year, Aurora Elmore, a climate scientist at the National Geographic Society, helped send 34 scientists to Mount Everest to install (安装) the highest weather stations in the world. The exploration provided valuable data for both of the new studies, each of which Elmore co-authored.
In a study published in iScience, Elmore and a team of scientists set out to document how the atmospheric pressure on Everest has fluctuated since the 1970s. As climate change is causing the air to slowly thicken, which means more oxygen is available at higher altitudes. When temperature rises, molecules (分子) move faster. And when these molecules start to collide (碰撞) with each other, pressure increases.
To analyze the changes in the atmosphere, lead author Tom Matthews and his team collected data using those weather stations installed in 2019. They used the climate data to build models, which suggest that if global temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the maximum rate of oxygen consumption on Everest will increase by 5%.
The other study is published in One Earth. Owen King, from the University of St Andrews in the UK? and his team studied 79 glaciers and found that between 2009 and 2018, glaciers thinned at nearly twice the rate they did in the 1960s.
The results are concerning. Besides the 18 local communities living in the Himalayas, nearly two billion people depend on the mountain range for a source of fresh water. "Although faster melting might mean more water, it's only a good thing for a little bit of time," Elmore says. Worse still, if water melts too fast, it arrives in the form of floods, which people in the area are already experiencing.
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