美国国家公共电台 NPR When The Weather Is Extreme, Is Climate Change To Blame?

 

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

This past week has brought dramatic weather events around the world. Deadly heat has been baking Japan and Britain. Wildfires in Greece, Scandinavia and the western United States also costing lives. And then record rainfall in the northeastern U.S. NPR's Laurel Wamsley takes a look at how this extreme weather fits into the big climate picture.

LAUREL WAMSLEY, BYLINE¹: 2018 is looking like it could end up being one of the hottest years on record. And when the news is full of stories on extreme weather, it's hard not to wonder, is this what climate change looks like? Climate scientists say, yeah, at least partly. Take wildfires, for example.

JENNIFER BALCH: We see five times more large fires today than we did in the 1970s.

WAMSLEY: That's Jennifer Balch, professor in geography and director of Earth Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder². Wildfires are a normal part of the ecosystem³ of the American West. What's changing is the backdrop against which they occur.

BALCH: We've seen a 2-degree-Fahrenheit increase across the western U.S. Snowpack is melting earlier. And what that's doing is essentially⁴ opening up the window for a fire to happen over a much longer period of time.

WAMSLEY: In fact, fire season is three months longer than it was just a few decades ago. Last year was the costliest⁵ fire season ever, with damages exceeding $18 billion. Weather and climate disasters in the U.S. caused more than $300 billion in damages in 2017, shattering previous records, though that's not all climate. The increased costs are partly caused by development and sprawl⁶. Andreas Prein is a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric⁷ Research in Boulder, Colo. He studies how extreme weather, especially thunderstorms and heavy downpours, might change in the future. He says that over the last 50 years, the number of really big rainstorms has increased by 70 percent.

ANDREAS PREIN: What we see from climate change is that you lose a lot of these very moderate and light rainfall storms and replace it with very intense storms.

WAMSLEY: Prein says scientists are just beginning to put numbers on the effect that climate change is having on individual storms.

PREIN: They pick an extreme event - let's say Hurricane Harvey - and they try to run the event without human greenhouse gas emissions⁸. And then they add the human components⁹ to the atmosphere and basically compare those to realizations¹⁰ of the world with each other. So you can try to get a feeling for how we altered a specific extreme event or the likelihood and intensity¹¹ of an extreme event.

WAMSLEY: Some aspects of climate change are pretty certain, he says. The planet is getting warmer. Rainstorms are getting more severe, and so are heat waves.

PREIN: You can clearly attribute this to climate change.

WAMSLEY: To a certain degree, that we've had so much extreme weather this week is a coincidence. Fires, heat waves and rainstorms happen every summer. But what researchers do say is that climate change makes this kind of extreme weather more common. And that trend is expected to continue as the planet keeps warming. Laurel Wamsley, NPR News.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 boulder   

n.巨砾；卵石，圆石

参考例句：

• We all heaved together and removed the boulder.大家一齐用劲，把大石头搬开了。
• He stepped clear of the boulder.他从大石头后面走了出来。

3 ecosystem   

n.生态系统

参考例句：

• This destroyed the ecosystem of the island.这样破坏了岛上的生态系统。
• We all have an interest in maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem.维持生态系统的完整是我们共同的利益。

4 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

5 costliest   

adj.昂贵的( costly的最高级 )；代价高的；引起困难的；造成损失的

参考例句：

• At 81 billion dollars, Katrina is the costliest natural disaster in American history. “卡特里娜”飓风造成了近810亿美圆的损失，是美国历史上最严重的自然灾难之一。 来自互联网
• Senator John Kerry has proposed a tax on the costliest health plans sold by insurance companies. 参议员约翰？克里(JohnKerry)已经提议对保险公司销售的高价值的保险计划征税。 来自互联网

6 sprawl   

vi.躺卧，扩张，蔓延；vt.使蔓延；n.躺卧，蔓延

参考例句：

• In our garden,bushes are allowed to sprawl as they will.在我们园子里，灌木丛爱怎么蔓延就怎么蔓延。
• He is lying in a sprawl on the bed.他伸开四肢躺在床上。

7 atmospheric   

adj.大气的，空气的；大气层的；大气所引起的

参考例句：

• Sea surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation are strongly coupled.海洋表面温度与大气环流是密切相关的。
• Clouds return radiant energy to the surface primarily via the atmospheric window.云主要通过大气窗区向地表辐射能量。

8 emissions   

排放物( emission的名词复数 )； 散发物（尤指气体）

参考例句：

• Most scientists accept that climate change is linked to carbon emissions. 大多数科学家都相信气候变化与排放的含碳气体有关。
• Dangerous emissions radiate from plutonium. 危险的辐射物从钚放散出来。

9 components   

（机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分

参考例句：

• the components of a machine 机器部件
• Our chemistry teacher often reduces a compound to its components in lab. 在实验室中化学老师常把化合物分解为各种成分。

10 realizations   

认识，领会( realization的名词复数 )； 实现

参考例句：

• Popular realizations of MPI standard are CHIMP and LAM and so on. 目前，公用的MPI实现有CHIMP、lam等。
• The author presents some realizations from the certificate assurance work. 本文介绍了笔者在ISO9001质量体系认证工作中的几点体会。

11 intensity   

n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度

参考例句：

• I didn't realize the intensity of people's feelings on this issue.我没有意识到这一问题能引起群情激奋。
• The strike is growing in intensity.罢工日益加剧。