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. 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 over those clouds and prevents tropical systems from really becoming stronger. 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 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.”

1. Where can you probably read this article?

A．www.huffpost.com/entertainment/

B．www.bbc.com/innovation/science

C．www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/

D．www.nytimes.com/spotlight/global-culture-sports

2. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?

A．The explanation of wind shear.

B．The timing of the hurricane season.

C．The process of hurricane formation.

D．The reason for warmer surface water.

3. How can a La Niña affect the formation of hurricanes?

A．Generate less wind shear.

B．More rainfall in the Gulf Coast.

C．Block the path of the Pacific jet stream.

D．Higher temperature in the northern America.

4. What is the purpose of writing this article?

A．To report the hurricane-struck areas.

B．To remind people of getting prepared.

C．To introduce some geographic knowledge.

D．To explain the features of El Niño and La Niña.

2 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

Freddie Forbes stared in awe (敬畏) at the platform in the packed school hall. The headmaster marched onto the stage, followed by the captains of the school soccer team and rugby side. Freddie watched enviously (羡慕地) as each was presented with an honors jacket for their contribution to the school’s sporting success over the previous year. When the next presentation of honors jacket would come around, Freddie knew there was little hope that he would be the receiver of one of these treasured items of clothing.

“I wish you all a happy summer holiday,” the headmaster announced. “Although most of you will be going away to sunnier parts, there are others who will be staying near their home. The local council has asked the school to undertake a project over the next six weeks to help clear up litter around the area and separate it for recycling. If anyone is interested, come to my office and you will be supplied with a litter picker, bags and heavy-duty gloves.”

Freddie knew he would be at a loose end over the holiday, so he went to the office along with four other boys to pick up the equipment needed to gather up the rubbish which littered the streets around the school. When he arrived home, his mother looked at him curiously as he placed the equipment on the kitchen table.

“What is this all about?” she asked with a smile on her face. “Mum, I’m an average pupil and I’m not very good at sports,” he replied. “This waste recycling is one way I can contribute to the good name of the school.”

“Just as long as you don’t get fed up and stop half way through,” said Mum.

“I have made up my mind to stick this out through thick and thin,” Freddie said confidently.

注意：1.续写词数应为150个左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

Over the next few weeks, the other boys dropped out of the project.

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Hearing his name called by the headmaster, Freddie nervously made his way to the platform.

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3 . 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。

French disaster epic Notre-Dame on Fire hits Chinese big screen

This April marks the     1     (four) anniversary of Notre-Dame in Paris being engulfed by the biggest blaze in its history.

NotreDame on Fire, now in Chinese cinemas, is a disaster epic     2     veteran French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud, who also helmed Wolf Totem(2015), a drama film     3     (adapt) from Chinese writer Jiang Rong’s eponymous novel. The film made its China premiere on April 6 in Beijing in the presence of France’s Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak and the director.

Presenting a blow-by-blow recreation of the gripping events that     4     (happen) on April 15, 2019 when the fire at the French medieval catholic cathedral rocked France and shocked the whole world, Annaud’s new film hails the heroic people who put their lives on     5     line to accomplish the awe-inspiring rescue. Annaud unveiled the filming details of the film to the audience     6     (attend) the China premiere.

“It was a     7     (danger) movie. The actors were actually very close to the extremely violent fire, 1,200-degree Fahrenheit fire. There are very few digital special effects. Almost all of what you have seen are     8     (identical) reconstructed sets that I set on fire,” he said.

“When I saw this movie in Paris last year, it took me a few hours     9     I could breathe and walk normally on the street,” said Malak at the film’s China premiere.

The French minister announced that 2024 will be the France-China Year of Culture and Tourism and she invited Chinese tourists to travel to France for the occasion, especially to see the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris,     10     , after almost six years of extensive renovations, is scheduled to reopen to the public in December of the same year.

4 . Last fall my class and I went through an exercise to help the students understand how the world might address the climate crisis. Several things surprised the students. One was that nuclear power doesn’t help.

But many people think nuclear energy is going to be the climate solution. President Obama included federal loan guarantees for nuclear power in his energy plan, in the hopes of jump-starting construction and gain Republican support. (It did neither.) If I post something even faintly skeptical about nuclear power on Twitter, its advocates come out in force, accusing me of being a conservative, or worse.

What is it about nuclear energy that makes its advocates so determined in the face of what should be discouraging facts? After all, unlike futuristic, untried technologies, we have plenty of facts about this one, and most of them are discouraging. The first American civilian nuclear power plant broke ground in Pennsylvania in 1954, around the same time that physicist John von Neumann predicted that, within a few decades, nuclear power would be so efficient as to make energy “free—just like the unmetered air.” That didn’t happen. Today nuclear power remains the most expensive form of electricity generation in the U.S. -typically costing twice as much as a fossil-fuel-based plant.

Why then do so many people keep coming back to it? I think it’s the same reason people turn to geoengineering(气候工程) and nuclear fusion(聚变) (which has been “just around the corner” since 1943): the promise of technological progress. For the past century or more, humans have been accustomed to technological breakthroughs that made life easier, more comfortable and more entertaining. But climate change throws future advancement into doubt. It breaks the promise of progress. No matter what we do, we are going to be paying for the costs of our historical and current use of fossil fuels.

So we turn to technofideism- the faith that technology will save us. Perhaps it will. But perhaps it won’t, and our long-standing patterns of behavior will have to change along with our technology. And that’s a hard pill to swallow.

1. What is paragraph two mainly about?

A．Nuclear energy has lots of advocates.

B．The supporters of nuclear energy are unwise.

C．President Obama failed to conduct his energy plan.

D．Doubtful remarks about nuclear power will attract criticism.

2. What is the purpose of mentioning the first American civilian nuclear power plant ?

A．To show it was a groundbreaking project.

B．To compare nuclear power and fossil-fuel energy.

C．To prove nuclear power didn’t live up to people’s expectations.

D．To indicate we need futuristic, untried technologies rather than nuclear.

3. Why do people turn to technofideism?

A．Because it can cut down the current use of fossil fuels.

B．Because we tend to trust technological breakthroughs.

C．Because people are skeptical about the promise of technology.

D．Because geoengineering and nuclear fusion have set a good example.

4. Which one is the writer’s attitude to nuclear energy?

A．Optimistic.

B．Hesitant.

C．Aggressive.

D．Negative.

5 . 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。

Preserving more habitats for China’s giant pandas is providing a giant payoff.    1    (save) the giant panda from dying out isn’t just good for the panda, but it’s also good for economy, a new analysis by an international team of scientists shows.

The results,    2    (publish) in the magazine Current Biology, stress the economic bene-fits that go hand in hand with environmental protection. Giant pandas are one of the    3    (rare) species around the world. But pandas fell on hard times in recent decades, thanks largely    4    human encroachment (侵入). In 1980 alone,many habitats    5    (destroy) artificially, and in 1990, their habitats covered only 12,340 square kilometers,     6    is a major threat to the pandas in large part because bamboo, their main food source, is so low in nutrients that they must wander a lot of land in order to find and eat enough of it.

Because of this, Chinese officials began making significant efforts to save the panda from     7    (extinct), establishing more reserves and increasing the reserve area three times. Panda numbers    8    (gradual) began to recover, hitting 1,596 in 2000 and 1,864 in 2010.

“    9    is clear that society’s investment (投资)    10    (start) to pay off so far in terms of panda population recovery,” the study authors wrote.

6 . From airplanes to apartments, most spaces are now designed with sound-absorbing materials that help decrease various sounds of everyday life. But most of the sound-absorbing materials that can cancel out human voices, traffic noise and music are made from plastic foams (泡沫) that aren’t easily recycled or degraded. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering have created a biodegradable film (薄膜) obtained from seaweed, which effectively absorbs sounds in this range.

Controlling and optimizing the way sound moves throughout a room is the key to creating functional spaces. Foam sound-absorbing panels are a common solution, and they come in a variety of materials and thicknesses tailored to specific sound requirements. Most of these foams, however, are made from a type of plastic material and other chemical substances that are obtained from natural oil or petrol. To avoid petrochemicals, researchers have explored more renewable sources and biodegradable sound-absorbing alternatives. But many current options are made from plant fibers that don’t effectively decrease noises in the most useful range of sound frequencies, or they are too thick or difficult to produce. So, Chindam’s team wanted to develop a biodegradable material from a plant, which would be simple to produce and could absorb a range of sounds.

The team created films of agar (琼脂), a material that comes from seaweed, along with other additives developed from plants and varied the thickness of the films. After running the materials through a battery of tests, the researchers measured how well the films reduced sound across a range of frequencies. To do this, the team created a sound tube in which a speaker is placed at one end, and the test film is fitted over the other end. Microphones in the middle of the tube measured the amount of sound sent by the speaker and the amount of sound reflected off the film. These experiments showed that the films with many small holes made with the highest concentrations of agar had the greatest sound-absorbing qualities and performed similarly to traditional sound-absorbing foams. The researchers plan to explore ways to change the agar films to give them other desirable properties, such as flame resistance, and will explore other biologically obtained film materials.

1. What is the disadvantage of plastic foams?

A．They take up, too much space.	B．They cannot absorb sounds effectively.
C．They cannot meet specific sound requirements.	D．They have difficulty achieving sustainable use.

2. What kind of sound-absorbing material would Chindam’s team develop?

A．One obtained easily and effectively.	B．One produced toughly and tiredly.
C．One developed from petrochemicals.	D．One made from plant fibers.

3. What is the last paragraph mainly about?

A．The purpose of film research.	B．A series of tests on the new material.
C．A tool of measuring the film thickness.	D．The difficulty of searching the new material.

4. What can be the best title for the text?

A．An Eco-friendly Sound-absorbing Material from Seaweed

B．Plastic Foams: the Worst Choice of Absorbing Sounds

C．A Tube for Measuring the Amount of Underwater Sounds

D．Seaweed: a Better Sound-absorbing Underwater Plant