【推荐1】In the hours after the earthquake that hit Nepal on April 25,2015, thousands of rescue teams from around the world were sent there to help search for survivors through the ruins. This can be a very tough task, since it can take many hours to safely dig survivors, often in need of immediate medical care, out of the ruins.

After spending 80 hours in the ruins of a building outside Kathmandu, Rishi Khanal was pulled out alive by a French search and rescue team. Khanal had been trying to get the attention of rescue workers for days. After the team found him, they spent 10 hours digging him out. The team broke the concrete (混凝土) that trapped Khanal within the building and pulled him up through a hole before carrying him away. Khanal suffered a broken leg.

“What made his survival so unusual was that after the first three days, there was little chance of finding survivors. It seemed he survived by willpower,” said Akhilesh Shrestha, a doctor who treated Khanal.

Meanwhile, rescues of a different kind were taking place on Mount Qomolangma.

On the border (边境) between Nepal and its northern neighbor China, more than 100 people were trying to climb Mount Qomolangma when the earthquake hit. 19 people were killed when an avalanche (雪崩) caused by the earthquake hit hundreds of tents (帐篷) at base camp. At least 61 people were injured.

The surviving climbers, who were stranded (滞留) in two different camps both above 21,000 feet, have all been rescued and returned to base camp. Small helicopters carried the climbers down the mountain in groups of four or five. Landing on Qomolangma long enough to pick up a passenger is dangerous even in good conditions, and helicopters could not touch down for more than 30 seconds to pick up passengers.

【推荐3】After a month of fires that gave off record-breaking amounts of polluting gas, smoke from Siberian wildfires is now making its way to the west coast of the United States.

The New York Times’ Somini Sengupta reports that Arctic wildfires in June 2020 caused more pollution than the data (数据) that had been collected in the previous 18 years. Seasonal wildfires are common in Siberia, but this year’s fires are unusually widespread in part because of a climate change-driven heatwave. The Arctic is experiencing climate change-driven warming faster than the rest of the earth, which sets up the dry conditions that make fires spread.

“I was surprised to see a fire burning 10 kilometers south of a bay of the Laptev Sea, which is like, the sea ice factory of the world,” said fire researcher Jessica McCarty from Miami University in Ohio. “When I went into fire science as an undergraduate student, if someone had told me I’d be studying fire regimes (管强体制) in Greenland and the Arctic, I would have laughed at them.”

This June’s Arctic fires beat the pollution record set in 2019, said Mark Parrington, who works with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service tracking worldwide wildfires. Some of the fires may have spent the winter months smoldering (闷燃) only to grow again in warmer weather. And the weather has certainly gotten warmer. In June, a Russian town above the Arctic circle called Verkhoyansk hit a high temperature of 100,4 degrees Fahrenheit.

The current situation in the Arctic circle shows that previous predictions (预测) “underestimate what is going on in reality,” earth scientist Vladmir Romanovsky sold. He added that temperature observation in the High Arctic made in the last 15 years weren’t expected for another seventy years.

Millions of acres of land are on fire this wildfire season. Most of the wildfires are located in Siberia’s Sakha Republic, which sees wildfires frequently, but fires are also spreading further north and into unusual ecosystems, like those that are characterized by permafrost (永冻土).

【推荐3】Although stress over test taking, handing in homework and balancing school and a social life is nothing new to Richard Montgomery students, online learning has introduced a whole new idea of what a stressful school day feels like. Without face-to-face communication, many students have found themselves needing to work out new ways to cope with their stress.

Junior Rayan Ouattara is a basketball player at RM and is feeling the stress of missing this year’s season. In order to relieve stress, he enjoys doing outdoor activities. “Every time I need to relax or think of something other than school. I like to pick up the ball and make a shot.” said Ouattara.

Whether it is your first year in high school or your last, it’s difficult to be missing out on the experience. Senior Kyle Dexter is experiencing these hard times first hand. “It has definitely been stressful to think that last December could have been my last days on campus and I won’t get to have another year to do all the things I wanted to... I have been doing late night walks while listening to music to help.” said Dexter, when asked what has stressed him out about missing his senior year and how he is coping.

While Dexter is sharing his experience of his senior year, Jordyn Kolchins in her first year of high school has lots to say about her new life. “It’s been really stressful, especially because the work schedule is a lot heavier than in middle school and being online has been pretty crazy... I really like doing coloring books. They are really good for destressing.”

Although students from all different grades have expressed their fears about this school year, their futures, and high stress levels, it’s important to remember that there are ways to deal with these difficult times and remember that everyone is going through this together. This may mean taking your mind off some things for a momcnt and finding new ways to do the activities you love, even if you haven’t discovered quite how yet.

【推荐2】When 62-year-old fisherman Kpana Charlie has finished placing the day’s catch in his nets, he likes to sit on his wooden chair and let his mind go back to his childhood. Back then, his home on Sierra Leone’s Nyangai Island seemed like a paradise (天堂).

He spent endless hours playing with his friends on the island’s shining white beaches. He liked to kick around a soccer ball on the sports field in his village, and in mango season, he would shake the trees to collect their colorful fruit. Whenever he wanted to avoid doing his homework, he could simply disappear into the thick forest that covered much of the island.

Today, Nyangai is disappearing, swallowed up by the sea. As recently as ten years ago, it still measured some 2, 300 feet from end to end. What’s left today is a patch of (一片) sand which is 300 feet long and 250 wide. The forests are gone, flooded by saltwater. The soccer field lies under water for 22 hours of the day. And the land on which Charlie’s family home once stood, the home he was born in, has been disappearing under the waves. In as little as two years, Charlie fears, Nyangai may no longer exist at all.

With nearly a third of its population living in coastal areas, and its heavy reliance on agriculture and fishing, Sierra Leone has been treated as one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate (气候) change.

Gabriel Jaka, head of operations for the country’s Meteorological Agency, says the reason for Nyangai’s troubles is clear. “We’re seeing a significant sea-level rise and these people don’t have any proper defenses,” he says. “All they have are sandbags. If we don’t act now, the effects on people are just going to get worse.”

【推荐3】A huge block of ice has collapsed from the Marmelada mountain in Daly, leaving at least 5 dead and 10 wounded. All the mountain rescue stations in the area have been activated and the injured have been hospitalized in several hospitals, the national Rai TV reported, citing the Alpine Rescue.

“This summer risks being the perfect storm for glaciers(冰川),” said Ginvanni Baccolo. He is an environmental scientist and glacier expert at Milan-Bicocca University. Baccolo noted a lack of winter snow and a hot start to the summer affecting glaciers. “Nobody could have expected a glacier like the Marmolada to react like this,” he told Reuters. Temperatures on the normally freezing Marmolada reached 10 degrees Celsius on Saturday, Veneto area governor Luca Zaia said.

In fact, Italy has experienced early and severe summer heat. Glaciers in Europe’s Alpine Mountains, including the Dolomite Mountains, are becoming more unstable and dangerous because of rising temperatures linked to climate change.

“High altitude glaciers such as the Marmolada are often steep(陡峭的) and relying on cold temperatures below zero degrees Celsius to keep them stable.”said Poul Christoffersen. He is a professor at the University of Cambridge who studies glaciers. Christoffersen said that climate change melts more water, which releases heat that warms up the ice if the water re -freezes. He added that a worse effect would be the lifting of the glacier forn the rock below, causing a sudden unstable collapse.

Baccolo made suggestions to the climbers heading into the mountains to escape the summer heat. “The invitation I want to make to those who go to the high mountains this summer is to use much more carefulness,” he said. “The problem is that it may no longer be enough to read the signs from the glacier that have been read so far,” he added.