1 . A study suggests that the Arctic may be essentially ice-free during summer within 15 years.
The study used statistical models to predict the future amount of the Arctic ice, which suggested that the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer during the decade of the 2030s — most likely in the year 2034.
Sea ice is frozen ocean water that melts each summer, and then refreezes each winter. The amount of summer sea ice in the Arctic has been steadily decreasing over the past few decades because of global warming. It reached its second-smallest level on record in 2019, the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.
Sea ice affects Arctic communities and wildlife such as polar bears and walruses, and it helps regulate (控制) the planet’s temperature by influencing the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean.
“The extent of the Arctic ice is important to Arctic peoples, whose lands are being affected by increased coastal erosion (侵蚀), “NOAA said. Conversely, the disappearance of ice creates economic opportunities, including the opening of oil fields and new shipping routes.” It also affects global weather patterns.
The study was conducted by scientists at NOAA, the University of Washington, and the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies.
What scientists refer to as the first “ice-free” Arctic summer year will occur when the Arctic has less than 1 million square kilometers of sea ice. (The thick ice sheets surrounding Canada’s Arctic islands are likely to remain for much longer, even in summer.) As the climate changes, the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Arctic air temperatures were about 1.9 degrees Celsius above average in 2019, and were the second-warmest since records began in 1900. Scientists also said the results of the study indicate that there is room for improvement in sea-ice models and that the ice may disappear even more quickly than current models suggest. “Climate models may be collectively underestimating (低估) the rate of change,” the authors write in the study.
1. What can we learn about the Arctic ice?| A．It reached its smallest level in 2019. |
| B．Its amount will increase during winter. |
| C．It is especially important to polar bears in summer. |
| D．It affects the planet’s temperature to some degree. |
| A．Oil fields will become fewer and fewer on lands. |
| B．More and more ships might visit the Arctic in the future. |
| C．Coastal erosion won’t influence Arctic peoples’ lands any more. |
| D．There will be a decline in the land’s economic development. |
| A．They cannot be improved in a short time. |
| B．They can show climate changes clearly. |
| C．They may not indicate the exact rate of change. |
| D．They cannot measure the thickness of ice sheets. |
| A．A geography magazine. | B．A travel guidebook. |
| C．A physics textbook. | D．A survey report. |
Antarctica: the Last Continent
Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth. It’s also the
Yet Antarctica is home to a variety of wildlife that has adapted
Today, scientists from many countries travel to Antarctica
3 . Members of a native community in the arctic areas of Sweden say their reindeer (驯鹿) are facing possible starvation from unusual weather related to climate change. The Sami indigenous community takes care of about 8,000 reindeer throughout the year. The animals are moved between traditional feeding areas in high mountains bordering Norway in the summer and forests farther east in the winter.
Community member Niila Inga is worried about his reindeer. He said climate change has affected the area’s weather activity and created food shortages. “If we don’t find better areas for them where they can graze and find food, then the reindeer will starve to death,” Inga said. He demonstrated the problem by reaching down into the snow and pulling up a hard piece of ice close to the soil.
The area received unusual snowfall early in the fall, followed by rain that froze. Inga said this traps the plants that reindeer eat under a thick cover of ice. Some of the hungry reindeer have now moved away from their traditional migration areas in search of food.
Community members say half the reindeer moved towards the east as planned. But the rest headed back to the mountains, where they face the risk of attacks by other animals or being caught in an avalanche. Older members of the Sami community say that in the past, they only encountered bad winters about once every ten years. But now extreme and strange weather is getting more and more normal, happening several times a year.
Snowfall is normal for the area. But as temperatures increase, rain can also fall, creating a “rain-on-snow” effect. When this happens, food remains trapped underneath the ice where the reindeer cannot reach it. This causes the animals to grow weaker and struggle to make it through the winter. Weather changes have hit the Sami community hard.
Sanna Vannar is president of the Swedish Sami Youth organization. The group launched (发起) a legal action in 2018 to force the European Union (EU) to set better targets for reducing human-caused greenhouse gases.
“We’ve said we don’t want money because we can’t buy better weather with money,” Vannar said. “We’ve said we need the EU to take action and they need to do it now.”
1. What problem are the reindeer facing now?| A．Hot weather. | B．Lack of food. |
| C．The risk of migration. | D．The loss of their habitat. |
| A．Eat grass. | B．Give birth. | C．Have a sleep. | D．Move around. |
| A．To escape being attacked by other animals. | B．To find a warmer place for winter. |
| C．To escape from avalanches. | D．To search for food. |
| A．To get some money. | B．To join the European Union. |
| C．To improve weather conditions. | D．To protect the soil of the arctic areas. |
1. When does the conversation probably take place?
| A．In the morning. | B．In the afternoon. | C．In the evening. |
| A．Unbelievable. | B．Scientific. | C．Foolish. |
| A．Two. | B．Three. | C．Four. |
1. Where does the woman always follow news?
| A．On TV. | B．On her phone. | C．On the Internet. |
| A．Sports. | B．Weather. | C．Net stars. |
Dujiangyan is the oldest man-made water system in the world, and
In the Warring States Period of ancient China, Li Bing, the
Dujiangyan
Long ago in Ancient China, there was a mythical figure
It is said that the home town of Shennong was a forest in Hubei Province, which today is called “Shennongjia”. This beautiful and diverse region covers
Banbiyan is famous for its stone forest, as well as its bamboo forests and grasslands that flood with
8 . In 2011, retired worker Joao, found a South American penguin
A week later, Joao tried to
In fact, Dindim returns to Joao’s little beach in the summer every year-it’s
Joao
When Dindim is staying with Joao, the two friends sometimes like to take a walk together down the beach-or sometimes Joao walks and Dindims swims alongside him. “I love the penguin like it’s my own
Who said there wasn’t still some
| A．sitting | B．lying | C．standing | D．walking |
| A．off | B．beneath | C．on | D．in |
| A．affected | B．caused | C．fed | D．ate |
| A．release | B．figure | C．proceed | D．note |
| A．struggled | B．responded | C．charged | D．disappeared |
| A．composed | B．believed | C．set | D．jumped |
| A．permit | B．threaten | C．migrate | D．tap |
| A．recalls | B．retells | C．recognizes | D．recites |
| A．had come | B．has been coming | C．comes | D．is coming |
| A．figures | B．bothers | C．comes | D．leaves |
| A．slimmer | B．former | C．happier | D．younger |
| A．emerged | B．appreciated | C．applauded | D．reacted |
| A．pet | B．child | C．toy | D．bird |
| A．stand | B．hang | C．give | D．pick |
| A．moving | B．strict | C．normal | D．visual |
9 . Technology usually distracts us from nature. But now technology is “offering us an opportunity to listen to nonhumans in powerful ways, reviving our connection to the natural world,” wrote professor Karen Bakker in her new book, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants.
All around the animal kingdom, there are sounds that we struggle to pick up and decipher. Elephants, for example, communicate with each other using infrasound, a sound frequency far below our human hearing range. Coral in the ocean also communicates with each other through sound waves, with one purpose being to attract baby coral to areas where it can successfully grow.
This is a shocking fact as coral doesn’t have any ears! Scientists have placed listening devices in these environments to pick up sounds humans are normally unable to detect.
After the sounds are recorded, AI is then able to determine their meaning, according to the news website Vox. There are now whole databases of whale songs and honeybee dances. Bakker wrote that one day this information could be turned into “a zoological version of Google Translate”.
One animal language Bakker wrote about is that of the elephant. She explained how elephants “have a different signal for honeybee, which is a threat, and a different signal for human,” in an interview with Vox. “Moreover, they distinguish between threatening humans and non-threatening humans,” she said.
This technology can not only understand the animals, but also communicate back to them. For example, bees use dances to communicate to their peers where to go in search of nectar. A research team in Germany, therefore, fed the bee language AI database system into a robot bee, allowing the robot to create a dance routine that can tell the bees which direction to move, Vox reported. Whereas in the past language creation had been limited to mainly apes, with there being many examples of chimpanzees (黑猩猩) having been taught sign language to communicate with humans, this new technology now allows humans to socialize with different animals throughout the animal kingdom.
1. What does the underlined word “decipher” most probably mean in paragraph 2?| A．Understand. | B．Hear. | C．Produce. | D．Record. |
| A．Infrasound. | B．Sounds within human range of hearing. |
| C．Sounds through its ears. | D．Sound waves. |
| A．Bees used dances to warn their peers of danger. |
| B．Human fed listening devices into coral to detect it. |
| C．Elephants have different signals for different purposes. |
| D．Elephants can tell whether there are threatening animals around. |
| A．To collect more bee dances. | B．To convey direction to bees. |
| C．To learn the language of bees. | D．To help bees search for their friends. |
Antarctica is a place of extremes. It is the coldest, highest, driest and windiest continent on Earth. Antarctica is a continent
The South Pole is 1, 235km from the closest coastline and is located high on the polar plateau (高原) (height 2, 800m). Here it may be as cold as - 75℃ , but the world’s
Only about 0.4% of the surface of Antarctica is free
Over the past few decades, Britain
