Antarctica(南极洲)’s melting ice, which has caused global sea levels to rise by at least 13.8 millimeters over the past 40 years, was thought to primarily come from the unstable West Antarctic Ice Sheet(WAIS). Now, scientists have found that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)—considered largely unaffected by climate change—may also be melting at an unexpectedly rapid speed.
The WAIS, whose base is below sea level, has long been considered the most likely to break down. Besides gravity, a deep current of warm water slips beneath the sheet, melting it from below until it becomes a floating shelf at risk of breaking away. In contrast, extreme cold and a base mostly above sea level are thought to keep the EAIS relatively safe from warm waters.
But as greenhouse gases warm much of the planet, driving stronger polar winds, some scientists think warm water carried by a circular current will start to invade East Antarctica’s once unassailable ice. A cooperation of more than 60 scientists last year, published in Nature, estimated that the EAIS actually added about 5 billion tons of ice each year from 1992 to 2017.
Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues combined 40 years of satellite imagery and climate modeling and found that overall Antarctica now sends six times more ice into the sea each year than it did in 1979, with the majority coming from West Antarctica. But East Antarctica was responsible for more than 30% of Antarctica’s contribution to the 13.8-millimeter sea level rise over the past 40 years. “The more we look at this system the more we realize this is fragile,” Rignot says. “Once these glaciers become unstable there is no red button to press to stop it.”
Rignot hopes the study brings greater attention to a part of Antarctica that has traditionally been understudied. Helen Fricker, a glaciologist (冰川学家) in California, agrees. “We need to monitor the entire Antarctica and we just can’t do that without international cooperation.”
1.What is the new finding of scientists?
A.The east Antarctica is losing ice at an increasing rate.
B.The west Antarctica is melting six times faster than in 1979.
C.5 billion tons of ice is added to Antarctica each year.
D.The sea level has risen by 13.8 mm over the past 40 years.
2.Which factor leads to the EAIS’s melting fast?
A.A base mostly over sea level. B.The force of gravity.
C.The invasion of a warm current. D.Extremely low temperature.
3.Which of the following best explains “unassailable” underlined in Para. 3 ?
A.Fragile. B.Unattackable.
C.Mild. D.Unstable.
4.Which way does Helen Fricker specially advocate?
A.Satellite imagery. B.Global monitoring.
C.Worldwide climate modeling. D.Worldwide combined efforts.
高二英语阅读理解困难题
Antarctica(南极洲)’s melting ice, which has caused global sea levels to rise by at least 13.8 millimeters over the past 40 years, was thought to primarily come from the unstable West Antarctic Ice Sheet(WAIS). Now, scientists have found that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)—considered largely unaffected by climate change—may also be melting at an unexpectedly rapid speed.
The WAIS, whose base is below sea level, has long been considered the most likely to break down. Besides gravity, a deep current of warm water slips beneath the sheet, melting it from below until it becomes a floating shelf at risk of breaking away. In contrast, extreme cold and a base mostly above sea level are thought to keep the EAIS relatively safe from warm waters.
But as greenhouse gases warm much of the planet, driving stronger polar winds, some scientists think warm water carried by a circular current will start to invade East Antarctica’s once unassailable ice. A cooperation of more than 60 scientists last year, published in Nature, estimated that the EAIS actually added about 5 billion tons of ice each year from 1992 to 2017.
Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues combined 40 years of satellite imagery and climate modeling and found that overall Antarctica now sends six times more ice into the sea each year than it did in 1979, with the majority coming from West Antarctica. But East Antarctica was responsible for more than 30% of Antarctica’s contribution to the 13.8-millimeter sea level rise over the past 40 years. “The more we look at this system the more we realize this is fragile,” Rignot says. “Once these glaciers become unstable there is no red button to press to stop it.”
Rignot hopes the study brings greater attention to a part of Antarctica that has traditionally been understudied. Helen Fricker, a glaciologist (冰川学家) in California, agrees. “We need to monitor the entire Antarctica and we just can’t do that without international cooperation.”
1.What is the new finding of scientists?
A.The east Antarctica is losing ice at an increasing rate.
B.The west Antarctica is melting six times faster than in 1979.
C.5 billion tons of ice is added to Antarctica each year.
D.The sea level has risen by 13.8 mm over the past 40 years.
2.Which factor leads to the EAIS’s melting fast?
A.A base mostly over sea level. B.The force of gravity.
C.The invasion of a warm current. D.Extremely low temperature.
3.Which of the following best explains “unassailable” underlined in Para. 3 ?
A.Fragile. B.Unattackable.
C.Mild. D.Unstable.
4.Which way does Helen Fricker specially advocate?
A.Satellite imagery. B.Global monitoring.
C.Worldwide climate modeling. D.Worldwide combined efforts.
高二英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析
Antarctica(南极洲)’s melting ice, which has caused global sea levels to rise by at least 13.8 millimeters over the past 40 years, was thought to primarily come from the unstable West Antarctic Ice Sheet(WAIS). Now, scientists have found that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)—considered largely unaffected by climate change—may also be melting at an unexpectedly rapid speed.
The WAIS, whose base is below sea level, has long been considered the most likely to break down. Besides gravity, a deep current of warm water slips beneath the sheet, melting it from below until it becomes a floating shelf at risk of breaking away. In contrast, extreme cold and a base mostly above sea level are thought to keep the EAIS relatively safe from warm waters.
But as greenhouse gases warm much of the planet, driving stronger polar winds, some scientists think warm water carried by a circular current will start to invade East Antarctica’s once unassailable ice. A cooperation of more than 60 scientists last year, published in Nature, estimated that the EAIS actually added about 5 billion tons of ice each year from 1992 to 2017.
Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues combined 40 years of satellite imagery and climate modeling and found that overall Antarctica now sends six times more ice into the sea each year than it did in 1979, with the majority coming from West Antarctica. But East Antarctica was responsible for more than 30% of Antarctica’s contribution to the 13.8-millimeter sea level rise over the past 40 years. “The more we look at this system the more we realize this is fragile,” Rignot says. “Once these glaciers become unstable there is no red button to press to stop it.”
Rignot hopes the study brings greater attention to a part of Antarctica that has traditionally been understudied. Helen Fricker, a glaciologist (冰川学家) in California, agrees. “We need to monitor the entire Antarctica and we just can’t do that without international cooperation.”
1.What is the new finding of scientists?
A. The east Antarctica is losing ice at an increasing rate.
B. The west Antarctica is melting six times faster than in 1979.
C. 5 billion tons of ice is added to Antarctica each year.
D. The sea level has risen by 13.8 mm over the past 40 years.
2.Which factor leads to the EAIS’s melting fast?
A. A base mostly over sea level. B. The force of gravity.
C. The invasion of a warm current. D. Extremely low temperature.
3.Which of the following best explains “unassailable” underlined in Para. 3 ?
A. Fragile. B. Unattackable.
C. Mild. D. Unstable.
4.Which way does Helen Fricker specially advocate?
A. Satellite imagery. B. Global monitoring.
C. Worldwide climate modeling. D. Worldwide combined efforts.
高二英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析
In the past decades, sea ice ______ in the Arctic as a result of global warming.
A. had melted B. has been melting C. melted D. is melting
高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析
阅读下面短文，在空白处填入 1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。
Almost all the ice covering the Bering Sea has melted(融化), scientists have confirmed, 1.(throw) communities living around 2.(it) shores into disorder. The region’s ice cover 3.(normal) lasts for at least another month, and this year it has disappeared earlier than any other year except 2017.
Living in 4. northern Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Russia, the Bering Sea is experiencing the climate change and has drawn attention this year for record-breaking levels of winter melting. In February, rising Arctic temperatures 5.(lead) to around half the region’s disappearing in the space of two weeks.
A report 6.(send) by the International Arctic Research Centre at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has outlined the real-world effects of these surprising environmental 7.(change) on the many communities 8. live in the Bering Sea region.
In their report, the International Arctic Research Centre scientists wrote that while not every year will be as bad as this one, ice 9.(form) is likely to remain low if the Bering Sea’s waters remain warm. They also warn that communities will need to “prepare for more winters 10. low sea ice and stormy conditions”.
高二英语语法填空中等难度题查看答案及解析
When an ice cube melts, it creates a puddle (水坑). When an ice sheet (冰盖)melts, it raises sea levels. It sounds simple, but scientists have debated for decades whether both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets actually were shrinking, and how much that melting contributed to rising sea levels.
Now, a new study has provided the best evidence of how the polar ice sheets are responding to our warming world. In the study, an international team of scientists looked at 20 years of' data in the ice sheets collected by 10 satellite missions. The team's conclusion: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets both are losing ice overall. The researchers also found that between 1992 and 2011, melt water from those shrinking ice sheets caused sea levels to rise by about 11 millimeters.
Over the 19 years studied, the Greenland ice sheet lost 2.7 trillion metric tons of ice. The Antarctic ice sheet also shrank by about l.3 trillion metric tons. Previously, some scientists disagreed whether the Antarctic sheet, the largest mass of ice in the world, was shrinking or growing or neither.
While the Earth is warming overall, the effect of climate change varies from region to region. Over the last 15 years, for example, scientists have something disagreed over how climate change has affected the polar ice sheets. Many studies found that the sheets lost a lot of ice and that not enough snow fell on the sheets to compensate for the loss. But other studies found that the loss of ice was balanced by the gain in snowfall.
Richard Alley, a glacier scientist at Penn State University, said that many of those studies looked at different areas, and over different time periods. In addition, the studies didn't all use the satellite data in the same way. Those differences made, it difficult to compare the results.
The data in the new study matched time periods and areas. The study also combined measurements from kinds of satellites.
1.Why does the author use a common-sense phenomenon as the beginning?
A.To present the reason for ice sheet melting.
B.To show us the result of a scientific experiment.
C.To give a simple example to introduce the topic.
D.To present a common daily finding obvious to the readers.
2.The researchers reached their conclusion by_____.
A.analyzing the findings of former studies
B.observing the Antarctic and Greenland
C.referring to the data from satellites
D.making measurements in the Antarctic and Greenland
3.What does the underlined phrase "compensate for" in paragraph 4 refer to?
A.Cut down.
B.Lead to．
C.Bring about.
D.Make up for.
4.Which of the following might be the best conclusion for the passage?
A.Ice sheets are shrinking due to global warming.
B.People are suffering from climate change.
C.Rising sea levels makes people live in danger.
D.Shrinking ice has nothing to do with sea levels.
高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
概要写作
阅读下面短文，根据其内容写一篇60词左右的内容概要。
With global warming and melting ice, it isn’t easy being a polar bear anymore. Some studies have predicted that polar bears could die out by the end of the century. The good news is not all researchers think the bears are absolutely disappearing. Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History(AMNH) have published a new paper indicating that things might not be as bad for polar bears as some scientists expect.
To understand the reason for the researchers’ cautious optimism, we must first understand the factors that are threatening the polar bear’s existence. Polar bears consume a diet of mainly young seals. In order to hunt these seals, polar bears need to rest at the top of sea ice---the same ice that is increasingly melting for most of the year thanks to climate change. In another 50 years, experts expect that the Arctic will be too warm for sea ice to form for half of the year, leaving polar bears without a reliable food source and in serious danger of starvation.
As it turns out, alternative food sources for the polar bears aren’t completely out of the question. For as long as biologists have tailed after the animals, they’ve seen polar bears eating animals found on land like caribou(驯鹿) and snow geese---as well as the snow geese’s eggs.
Can polar bears actually survive off these alternative food sources for long periods of time? To figure this out, researchers calculated the nutrients that a caribou and snow geese diet would provide. They found that even adult male polar bears would be able to obtain more calories than they would burn in hunting these meals. Moreover, the food would provide the food necessary to avoid starvation during the summer months.
Unfortunately, not all polar bears have tended to seek food on land. That said, the researchers expect that necessity would push more polar bears to hunt on land to avoid starvation. They also expect that the bears could learn from their fellow bears how to hunt on land until the practice becomes second nature.
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高二英语书面表达中等难度题查看答案及解析
阅读下面短文, 根据其内容写一篇60词左右的内容概要。
With global warming and melting ice, it isn’t easy being a polar bear anymore. Some studies have predicted that polar bears could die out by the end of the century. The good news is not all researchers think the bears are absolutely disappearing. Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History(AMNH) have published a new paper indicating that things might not be as bad for polar bears as some scientists expect.
To understand the reason for the researchers’ cautious optimism, we must first understand the factors that are threatening the polar bear’s existence. Polar bears consume a diet of mainly young seals. In order to hunt these seals, polar bears need to rest at the top of sea ice---the same ice that is increasingly melting for most of the year thanks to climate change. In another 50 years, experts expect that the Arctic will be too warm for sea ice to form for half of the year, leaving polar bears without a reliable food source and in serious danger of starvation.
As it turns out, alternative food sources for the polar bears aren’t completely out of the question. For as long as biologists have tailed after the animals, they’ve seen polar bears eating animals found on land like caribou(驯鹿) and snow geese---as well as the snow geese’s eggs.
Can polar bears actually survive off these alternative food sources for long periods of time? To figure this out, researchers calculated the nutrients that a caribou and snow geese diet would provide. They found that even adult male polar bears would be able to obtain more calories than would burn in hunting these meals. Moreover, the food would provide the food lecessary to avoid starvation during the summer months.
Unfortunately, not all polar bears have tended to seek food on land. That said, the researchers expect that necessity would push more polar bears to hunt on land to avoid starvation. They also expect that the bears could learn from their fellow bears how to hunt on land until the practice becomes second nature.
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高二英语书面表达中等难度题查看答案及解析
A new report says sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting more quickly than expected. American scientists say the ice is melting even faster than computer programs had estimated.
Scientists know that climate change has a major effect on the Arctic Ocean partly because sea ice is disappearing. They also know that areas of open seawater are expanding. Such areas are known to take in sunlight and increase temperatures. Scientists say this has helped to cause the loss of the Arctic’s ice cover.
For the study, the American scientists compared eighteen computer programs with observations made by satellites and other instruments. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used the computer programs to prepare its 2007 estimates of climate change.
The computer programs gave estimates of the amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean in the month of September. September is when the Arctic has the least ice, after the warm, summer months. The computer estimates suggested an ice loss of two and a half percent for every ten-year period between 1953 and 2006.
Newer studies of the Arctic have used information gathered by aircraft, satellites and ships. This information showed a loss of September ice cover of almost eight percent for every ten-year period between 1953 and last year. This means the ice is disappearing about thirty years faster than the computer programs estimated.
The scientists say the programs might not have recognized the full effect of increased carbon dioxide and other gases in Earth’s atmosphere. They say their study suggests the gases may have more of an effect than had been thought.
1.It is reported that sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting more quickly than expected mainly because _________.
A. climate change B. sea ice’s disappearance
C. seawater’s expansion D. the loss of the Arctic’s ice cover
2. How did the scientists draw the conclusion that sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting more quickly than expected?
A. The scientists have been observing the Arctic Ocean for many years.
B. The scientists have compared the computer programs with observation made by satellites and other instruments.
C. The scientists have figured out many numbers with the help of computer.
D. The scientists have found that the seawater take in sunlight and increase temperatures.
3.If the ice melts at the present speed, by the end of this century the ice loss in the Arctic Ocean will be _________ according to newer studies.
A. 22.5% B. 35% C.72% D. 100%
4.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
A. The figures of the computer estimates are wrong.
B. Scientists study climate change through studying sea level.
C. Newer studies show gases may have more effect on sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.
D. The ice is melting even faster than satellites have estimated.
5.This report mainly warns human to _________.
A. prevent the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean from melting any more
B. pay more attention to the loss of the Arctic’s ice cover
C. take necessary steps to protect the environment of our earth
D. stop summer sea ice in the Arctic from disappearing so fast
高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析
Over the past decades, sea ice _____ in the Arctic as a result of global warming.
A. had decreased B. decreased C. has been decreasing D. is decreasing
高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析
Evidence of a powerful volcano, which erupted under the ice sheet of West Antarctica around 325BC and might still be active now, __________ so far by British scientists.
A. confirmed B. has confirmed
C. is confirmed D. has been confirmed
高二英语单项填空困难题查看答案及解析