【推荐1】Just a year ago, the colors were bright under the waves. Now it’s gray — the Maldivian reef is dead. The coral is killed by the pressure of rising temperatures.

Coral reefs are areas underwater where small creatures live. The coral is hard material formed on the bottom of the sea by the skeletons of those creatures. But the world has lost about half its coral reefs in the last 30 years. Scientists are working to prevent their destruction. Due to global warming, over 90 percent of corals are expected to die by 2050. “To lose coral reefs is to fundamentally undermine the health of a very large proportion of the human race,” said Ruth Gates, director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

Why are coral reefs important? Coral reefs support a fourth of all marine species, as well as half a billion people worldwide. They serve as barriers to protect coastlines from the storms. They provide billions of dollars from tourism, fishing and other trade. They are also used in medical research for cures for diseases. “Everyone should be concerned,” said biologist Ove Guldberg at Australia’s University of Queensland. “This is not just some distant dive destination. This is the basic structure of the ecosystem we depend on.”

The ocean is getting warmer. A rising temperature of just one to two degree Celsius can force coral to expel the algae (驱逐海藻) that live there. This leaves their white skeletons uncovered. It is a process called “bleaching”. Sixteen percent of the world’s corals died of bleaching in 1998. The problem has become much worse in recent years.

“We’ve lost 50 percent of the reefs, but that means we still have 50 percent left,” said Ruth Gates, who is working in Hawaii to breed corals that can better withstand increasing temperatures. She is also trying to “train” corals to survive rising temperatures. Gates says it is time to start “thinking outside the box”— find creative ways to help them.

【推荐2】A group of scientists are warning that weather extremes in the future and growing demand could lead to a drop in power supplied from renewable energy. Many scientists have partly blamed human activities for an increase in extreme weather events.

The study predicts the world’s power systems are expected to face pressure. One of the biggest expected pressures to face power systems will be an increase in the use of air conditioning systems because of rising temperatures. Why? The UN has estimated that 68 percent of people will live in cities by 2050. That compares to about 55 percent who live in cities currently.

Dasun Perera, a lead writer of the study, said in a statement , “We observed that current energy systems are designed in a way that makes them highly susceptible to extreme weather events such as storms and heat waves.”

The researchers found that extreme weather will make it difficult to balance the demand for power with production. “This will make it difficult to match the energy demand and renewable power generation,” Perera said. “Dealing with the effects of climate change is going to prove harder than we previously thought.”

Perera told the French Press Agency AFP that extreme weather events could reduce the reliability of power supplies by up to 16 percent. This, he said, could easily lead to “blackouts resulting in huge economic losses.” Perera said that energy experts do not consider the effects of extreme climate events when planning and designing energy systems.

In a separate article published in Nature Energy, U.S. and European researchers noted that traditional energy models often fail to consider extreme weather.

The researchers called on world governments to consider the short-term risks of extreme heat and cold when planning and building energy systems. World governments should require “new thinking, new experiments, and, quite possibly, new combinations of tools.” The researchers added：“This is a tall order to be sure, but there is no risk in trying.”

【推荐3】Climate change will bring greater extremes in weather, the Government’s chief scientific adviser warned as he called for action to deal with global warming. Professor Sir John Beddington says the effects of climate change on the weather are already being felt in the UK.

“In a sense we have moved from the idea of global warming to the idea of climate change, and that is rather important. Temperatures are increasing and there are more changes in our weather, ” he said.

Even if effective action is taken now on global warming, he says there will be great climate change over the next 20 to 25 years as a result of past global problems.

“We have serious problems in the world — in 12 years there will be another billion people on the planet and we have big issues of food security, water security and energy security, and many people will start to be living in cities, ” he said. “ These are serious problems; climate change is just going to make it worse.”

He said there were some “ uncertainties ” in the analysis of climate and climate change. “ But those uncertainties are completely unimportant in comparison with a great deal of evidence that shows it is happening in the sort of ways climate models would expect, ” he said. “ For example, the Arctic is heating up faster than other parts of the world — this is exactly what the climate scientists are predicting. ”

Sir John said those words as Britain experienced freezing cold weather and snow, with thousands of homes across the UK without power. England and Wales experienced 10 separate flooding events between April and December last year after widespread drought gave way to the wettest summer in a century, with unusually high rainfall totals and river levels around the country.

【推荐1】Two and a half months before the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season officially begins, forecasters have already predicted and warned that warm sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic and the development of a La Niña in the Pacific may create a “perfect storm” of the conditions needed for major hurricanes.

Key to the formation of any tropical cyclone (气旋) is the combination of warm ocean temperatures and the absence of what is known as wind shear (风切变). Alex DaSilva, a forecaster, explains that wind shear occurs when wind changes direction and speed at different heights in the atmosphere. When there’s much wind shear, it essentially knocks down those clouds and prevents tropical systems from really intensifying. Besides, hurricanes also need surface water to be at a temperature of 26 degrees Celsius or higher. That warm water, and the warm air just above it, provides fuel for the storm. The record data for February are 1.2 degrees Celsius above normal.

Over periods ranging from three to seven years, the waters of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean alternately (交替地) warm and cool as a result of a repeatedly occurring climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). During an El Niño, sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific increase, and those warmer temperatures affect the path of the Pacific jet stream, which in turn brings drier, warmer weather to the northern United States and Canada, and wetter conditions to the Gulf Coast of Mexico and southeast. El Niño reduces the possibility of Atlantic hurricane formation because it lowers hurricane activity and increases wind shear. La Niña has just the opposite effect of El Niño. During the 2023 season, ENSO was in an El Niño phase. By the time the 2024 season starts, it is likely to have shifted fully into a La Niña.

“If a tropical storm system comes into this area, it could rapidly intensify, potentially close to land,” DaSilva cautions. “And that’s why people need to be on alert and have their hurricane plans ready. Because any system with these kinds of conditions can explode very quickly. That’s what we’re concerned about.”

【推荐2】Last year, wildfire spread through Boulder, Colorado. It wasn’t a hot summer day. It wasn’t a forested neighborhood. It was winter in the suburbs (郊区). More than 1,000 homes and buildings burned.

Large parts of the country that don’t have wildfires are now at risk. They include nearly 80 million homes and buildings. That’s what new data shows. Over the next 30 years, the risk will only grow. The group First Street Foundation created a program called Fire Factor. People can go to a website to learn what their wildfire risk is in 2022 and in 2052. Right now, about 16% of Americans live in risky places. By 2052, that will go up to 21%.

California will likely suffer a lot from wildfire. That’s partly because it is so big and partly because of its weather. So California will be on the top of the at-risk list. But nearly half of all at-risk Americans in 2052 will live in the southern half of the U.S. The South will be home to the largest number of people at high risk: 32 million. States like Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and North and South Carolina will be “in the line of fire,” so to speak, and so will southwestern states like Arizona and New Mexico.

People are doing many things to make fire risk worse. They are moving to places where wildfire is a natural yearly event. They are building homes right next to plants and trees that can burn. Climate change has increased heat and dryness. That means any spark (火花) at any time can cause a big fire.

As with many climate threats, wildfires put minorities (少数群体) at the greatest risk. By 2052, about 44% of all Native Americans will live in places at major risk from wildfire. Nearly 1 in 4 Hispanics will. People who don’t speak English or own cars will have a harder time learning about and getting away from a fast-moving fire.

【推荐2】If you see someone collapse（晕倒）, perhaps as a result of a heart attack, what can you do while you wait for an ambulance? Chen Wenqiaochu set a good example when he was 14. He performed CPR on a cleaner at his school, saving the man's life in 2013. Chen showed that knowing how to perform CPR can be beneficial.

According to medical experts, there is a "golden period", the first four minutes of a heart attack, when CPR is most effective in saving the person's life. On Aug. 24, a joint guideline was issued by the Ministry of Education and Red Cross Society of China. It asks all public schools nationwide to provide first-aid courses, including CPR training, as part of health education. CPR is not hard to grasp. All that one needs to learn is how to observe and decide if a person is unconscious, where to press on the patient's chest, and how to blow air through the mouth and into the lungs.

Unfortunately, less than 1 percent of Chinese adults have mastered the skill of CPR, while many have never heard of it. A 2019 survey from the Development Research Center (DRC) of the State Council noted that although 64.6 percent of schools have opened health education courses, the teaching results are not satisfactory, according to China Youth Daily.

Zhao Shengyu, 18, a graduate from a Shandong high school, recalled her first time to be taught CPR in the class. "No model, video or practice was included. I realized the acts I had been taught orally had lots of errors after I was trained another time in a medical school," she said. Based on her own experience, Zhao said more qualified first-aid courses in schools are necessary. Ding Banghan, a doctor from Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, is a strong supporter for bringing first-aid knowledge into the classroom. "The first-aid course in schools is key for its popularization," said Ding.

Apart from China, many countries have attached importance to the popularization of first-aid training, including CPR.