A tornado is a rotating column of air from a thunderstorm to the ground. Almost all of them occur in the US, in the area from Texas in the southeast to South Dakota in the north.

Tornadoes can cause much     1    (destroy).     2     average there are 800 tornadoes in the US each year. The    3    (bad) one of all time happened in 1925,     4    (affect) three US states. By the time it ended, more than 700 people     5    (kill) and 2, 700 had been injured.

Hurricanes are strong tropical storms. There are violent winds of 120 kilometers per hour or more,     6     cause bad weather. There     7    (be) about six Atlantic hurricanes each year. The worst hurricane disaster     8     (occur) on the 8th September 1900. The disaster killed 6, 000 people in     9     population of 37, 000 and destroyed 3, 600     10    (build).

A new United Nations climate report predicts Africa’s rare glaciers (冰川) will disappear in the next 20 years. The report, called State of the Climate in Africa,     1     (release) last Tuesday by the UN’s World Meteorologicale (气象的) Organization (WMO) and other agencies. It warns that climate change will be the cause of the     2     (disappear) glaciers in eastern Africa.

The report warns that     3     shrinking glaciers at Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Kenya’s Mount Kenya and the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda are signs of widespread climate change to come. “    4     the current shrinking rate continues, it will lead to total disappearance by the 2040s,” the report says.

The report notes that last year was Africa’s third     5     (warm)on record. Data shows temperatures on the continent were 0.86 degrees Celsius higher than the average in the 30 years leading up to 2010. The WMO warns that Africa’s 1.3 billion people remain “    6     (extreme) vulnerable (脆弱的)” as the continent keeps getting warmer     7     a faster rate.

Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the WMO, said massive displacement, hunger and increasing climate events such as droughts and flooding are likely     8     (continue). He added there is a great need for investments in Africa to develop systems and technology     9     can help the continent deal with the effects of climate change. The money could be used to improve early warning systems and build     10     (equip) to better observe weather and water movements.

The International Day for Biological Diversity, sometimes     1     (call) World Biodiversity Day, is a United Nations holiday based on biodiversity issues. It started in 1993 and is held on May 22 every year.

Biodiversity is the     2     (vary) types of plants and animals living together in a certain place,     3     (include) life at the genetic and cell level, through to all plant, fish, insect and animal species. Biodiversity also includes the thousands, perhaps millions, of ecosystems     4     make up our natural world.     5     word “biodiversity” arrived in 1985. It is a contraction of the words “biological” and “diversity”. And recently it     6     (grow) into a very important concept we all need to understand.

A respect for biodiversity means an understanding that we must help save our environment. Today, biodiversity is one of the world’s most important     7     (issue). Many say that together with climate change, damage     8     biodiversity is the biggest threat to our     9     (survive). The COP 15 meeting held in October in Kunming paves the way for global cooperation. Let’s join hands and make the Earth greener, so that we can prosper     10     (continuous).

Every day we use energy. We use it for cooking, for heating and for lighting our cities. The energy comes from many different     1     (source). It can come from the sun, wind and water, but the energy we depend on the most comes from deep inside the Earth. These include coal, oil, and natural gas.

These fuels come from the remains of plants and animals. It takes millions of years     2     (make) them. However, with the world’s population     3    (grow), more and more of these fuels are dug up from the ground. Yet these fuels are non-renewable. When they     4    (use) up, they will be gone forever.

We need to have a strong sense of     5    (responsible) and it’s high time for us to think about     6     we can help save energy and preserve these fuels.

What about turning off anything     7     (electricity) we are not using? That’s a start! We can also recycle things such as newspapers, cans, bottles, and plastic—including plastic bags. Plastic bags start out as either oil     8     coal, and one big city can use millions of plastic bags in a year. When we use recycled things, it takes less energy     9     making something new.

Cars consume a lot of fuel, but there     10     (be) a variety of measures that car owners can take to preserve fuel. Try asking your family whether we can take a bus or walk instead of using the car.

Kim Cobb, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, is one of a small but growing minority of academics     1     are cutting back on their air travel because of climate change. Travelling to conferences, lectures, workshops, and the like frequently by plane       2    （view） as important for scientists to get together and exchange information. But Cobb and others     3     （be） now questioning that idea pushing conferences to provide more chances to participate remotely, and     4    （change） their personal behavior to do their part in dealing with the climate change crisis. On a website called No Fly Climate Sci, for example,     5    （rough） 200 academics - many of them climate scientists     6     （promise） to fly as little as possible since the effort started two years ago.

Cobb, for her part, started to ask conference organizers who invited her to speak     7     she could do so remotely; about three-quarters of     8     time, they agreed. When the answer, was no, she, declined the     9     （invite）. That approach brought Cobb's air travel last year down by 75%, and she plans     10    （continue） the practice. "It has been fairly rewarding. ", she says, "a really positive change."

Mount Qomolangma, the world's highest mountain, is many things to many people. Adventure seekers and     1     （profession）climbers climb the mountain, again and again,       2     (consider) it to be an achievement. It     3     (report) that 2019 saw more than 60,000 people visit it. Imagine the amount of garbage that must have been collected.

A new gallery in Nepal is going to showcase artwork made from the garbage     4     has been removed from the mountain. The Sagarmatha Next Center, a visitors' center next to the base camp, will be hosting the gallery as a way     5     (draw) attention to the large amount of garbage left there.

Artists will create artwork using the garbage that the climbers often leave behind, including     6     (use) oxygen bottles, torn tents, ropes, broken ladders, cans and plastic wrappers. They will also teach locals how to turn it into     7     (piece) of art.

“We want to showcase how you can transform waste to precious art     8     provide employment and income,” Project director Tommy Gustafsson said. “We hope to change people's opinions about the garbage and manage it," he added.

The gallery is set to have a "soft opening" for locals in the spring. It     9     (display) artwork to raise environmental awareness and sell souvenirs. The money     10     the sale will go to conservation in the area, Gustafsson said.

Norway is to introduce new ways to protect wild salmon (三文鱼) after experts warned they could become endangered as a result of their contact     1     those raised in ocean farms.

The government has issued a report that shows that fish farms     2     (locate) along the Norwegian shore, with     3     population of more than 6 million farmed salmon, make up a significant risk to the wild salmon population due to crossbreeding and an increase in parasites.

The global number of Atlantic salmon     4     (fall) seriously at present, with its major reasons     5     (range) from overfishing, the spread of salmon lice, to habitat destruction.

    6     is reported, only about 3 million wild salmon remain in the Atlantic, down from more than 8 million in the 1980s. Vedeler Nilsen, an adviser in Norway’s environment ministry, said, “Farmed salmon have developed with characteristics that are     7     (benefit) to aquaculture (渔业) such as faster growth and shorter time to become mature.     8    , they lose other characteristics in the process. When an escaped salmon breeds with wild populations, the offspring (后代) might have a lower chance of     9     (survive).”

While the Norwegian project focuses on the immediate need to separate salmon species, other long-term plans, such as recovering the habitats, also make a big difference to salmon’s environment that     10     (destroy) years ago due to a huge blank for fishery management.