1 . Standing on the ruins（废墟）after the fire where his house had been, Peter Ruprecht admitted that he was not sure how or when to rebuild. He was still shocked by what Australia's increasingly changeable climate had already delivered: first a drought, then a destructive bush fire, then a foot of rain from a storm.

"It's unstoppable," said Mr. Ruprecht, a former dairy farmer. "We speak about the warmth of Mother Nature, but nature can also be vicious and wild and unforgiving."

Australia's' hellish（地狱的）fire season has eased（缓和）, but its people are facing more than a single disaster. With floods destroying homes not far from where fires recently spread, they are facing a cycle of what scientists call "compound extremes": one climate disaster strengthening the next.

Warmer temperatures do more than just dry out the land. They also heat up the atmosphere, which means clouds hold more moisture（水汽）for longer periods of time. So droughts get worse, giving way to fires, then to heavy rains that the land is too dry to absorb.

Many Australians in disaster zones complain that their government, after ignoring climate change for years, has not yet to draw up recovery plans that are clear and that take future threats into account.

At the same time, the economic costs of a changing climate are rising quickly. Philip Lowe, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, warned recently that Australia was already paying a price, and that it would only go up.

2 . Typhoons can be deadly — in 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest ever recorded, was responsible for 6,340 deaths—and cost billions in damages. Current forecast models can only predict these storms 10 days in advance, at most, and they cannot precisely predict how intense the storms will become.

An international team of researchers has developed a model that analyzes nearly a quarter of Earth’s surface and atmosphere in order to better predict the conditions that birth typoons.

“The target problem of this study is how to foretell the birth of typhoons,” said paper author Mingkui Li, associate professor in the Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography in the Ocean University of China and the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (QNLM). “We specifically address three aspects: the beginning time, inner pressure and maximum wind speed.”

The researchers also accounted for the influence of one variable(变量) on another, such as wind speed on sea surface temperature. This influence is well understood and accounted for in climate predictions and in weather forecasts, but it has not been fully applied in understanding how long-term climate affects day-to-day weather, according to Li. “We aimed to provide insights on the time scale that can be used to forecast typhoons in advance.”

From their study, the researchers determined that a model with the ability to better understand the relationship between warm sea surface temperatures and weak wind movement— conditions that favor typhoon formation—could improve typhoon predictability.

“Our goal is to develop a 10 to 30-day prediction system that will lead to seamless(无缝的) weather-climate predictions.” Shaoqing Zhang, paper author and professor in the Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, said.

Ecotourism is the opposite of mass tourism. People travel to remote areas and visit faraway places without destroying the environment.Ecotourism is intended     1     small groups of tourists who want to learn more about nature in a certain area and help people who live there. Eco-tourists travel to places     2     plants and animals are the main attractions. They want to know more about how people live side by side in     3     natural habitat.

Ecotourism makes people recognize how beautiful the land and the countryside are. Local tour guides show     4     (visit) how important our environment is. They know how the region has developed over time. Tourists stay in small local houses,as opposed to big hotels in mass tourism regions.

Ecotourism started out in the 1980s as an alternative to mass tourism. Today it is one of the     5     (fast) growing sectors of the tourism industry because more and more people are     6     (gradual) realizing the importance of the environment. As a result,some countries are using ecotourism     7     (gain) profits. In some areas,it     8     (operate)by foreign investors who are only interested in     9     （they) own profits. However，     10     (bring) too many people to the remote place could damage local culture.

4 . Many people know that rubbish is a big problem on the Earth. What many people don’t know is that rubbish is becoming a problem in outer space too. Years of space exploration (探索) have left tons of “space junk” (太空垃圾) around the planet.

According to the reports of BBC, there are more than 22,000 pieces of rubbish in space around the Earth. And these are just the objects that are easy to see. There may be millions of smaller pieces of rubbish that we can’t see.

The pieces of space junk move around the planet at very high speeds. They move so fast that even a very small piece can become dangerous. If they crashed (碰撞) into each other, it could cause explosions that might even hurt people on the Earth. If the tiniest piece of rubbish crashed into a space shuttle (航天飞机), it could blow open a hole as big as an elephant.

To help solve this problem, countries around the world have agreed to limit the time their space tools stay in space to 25 years. Each tool must fall safely into the Earth’s atmosphere, or upper parts of the sky. There, it will burn up, and it won’t crash near the Earth.

5 . In recent years, Ethiopia has become a regional leader in solid waste management. Last year, the country transformed the landfill (垃圾填埋场) in Addis Ababa into a new waste-to-energy plant, the first such project on the continent. The plant incinerates up to 1, 400 tonnes of waste every day, about 80 percent of the city's rubbish, supplying the capital with 25 percent of its household electricity needs.

However, despite these important steps, challenges remain in Ethiopia. Although the country has permitted the Basel, Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions, laws and policies for environmentally sound management of hazardous (有害的) wastes are still not effective in pre- venting littering waste illegally.

To help Ethiopia meet these challenges, the Chemicals and Waste Management Program is supporting the country with a three-year project to enhance its capacity for sound management of hazardous wastes.

In the initial stages, a project management unit will be formed, made up of many representatives from government departments and private organizations. This unit will be responsible for reviewing and assessing Ethiopia's current legal system, which, despite numerous advances in recent years, does not specifically target the recycling of hazardous waste. Once legal gaps are identified, the project will seek to update existing policies and strategies.

Many people in Ethiopia are not aware of the possible effect of environmental damage and the need to report such crimes to the police. To resolve this pressing issue, Ethiopia will be conducting a series of capacity-building activities, including creating awareness-raising programs, training trainers and providing equipment.

Ethiopia will also work to establish a national mechanism for chemicals and waste management by engaging government departments and civil society groups. Authorities will also make budgetary provisions (预算拨款) in national, regional and institutional planning to ensure funding for these activities is sustainable even after the project's completion.

7 . Doing your laundry with cold water can help save the planet, and maybe save you some money along the way. That’s the message from Tide in a newly launched campaign to decarbonize laundry. The goal is for consumers in North America to do three out of every four loads of laundry with cold water instead of hot by 2030, up from about half today. That would eliminate the power consumption required to heat cold water.

If this goal is met, it will have the same impact on greenhouse gas emissions as removing about a million cars from the road for a year. “There is no tradeoff. You will save 150 a year in energy costs, your garments will last longer. And by the way, you’re helping to save the planet,” Shailesh Jejurikar, CEO of Procter & Gamble’s fabric and home care division, said in an interview. “It’s a beautiful win-win-win if we get this right.”

“This is going to be the defining decades for where we end up on climate change,” Jejurikar said. “If we don’t get this situation under control in the coming years, we are going to pay the price. There is a need to act now.” Beyond its focus on cold-water washing, Tide set a new goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions at its factories in half by 2030. That’s in addition to the progress it already has made cutting emissions by three-quarters over the past decade as the brand adopted 100% renewable energy at its manufacturing plants. Tide also plans to reduce its carbon footprint by using 100% recyclable packaging for all products by 2030 and by teaming up with Silicon Valley startup Opus12 to capture carbon from its factories.

Jejurikar said P&G does want to get to zero emissions in its factories, but added that how people use Tide products has 10 times more impact than what happens in its plants. “We are trying to give them chance to take their ordinary daily actions, and make them have an extraordinary impact,” Jejurikar said.

8 . The effects of noise can reach organisms (生物体) without ears. Because of the way living things rely on each other, noise pollution may actually stop some forests from growing, a new study suggests. In a New Mexico woodland of pine trees, researchers found far fewer tree seedlings (小苗) in noisy sites than they did in quiet ones.

The study area is dotted with gas wells, some of which are quiet and some of which have compressors (压缩机) that create a constant noise. This allowed Jennifer Phillips, a behavioral ecologist at Texas A&M University-San Antonio and her colleagues to compare sites that were similar except for noise level. In areas that had been noisy for at least 15 years, the researchers found only about 13 pine seedlings, compared with 55 pine seedlings per hectare (公顷) in quiet areas.

The differences in plant growth were probably caused by changes in animal behavior, said Phillips. For example, noise might drive away certain pollinators (传粉昆虫) such as bees, bats and moths. In the case of pine trees, the problem was likely a lack of animals to disperse seeds. Pines depend on birds to carry their seeds away from the parent tree, and birds are known to avoid noise. The differences between the sites aren’t yet obvious to someone walking through them, said Sarah Termondt, a botanist (植物学家) with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who helped conduct the study. That’s probably because pines are slow-growing, with most of the mature trees in such woodlands being over a century old.

The study raises questions about the future of the area. “If the noise stays there long term, are we going to lose this important ecosystem of the pine which supports so much wildlife?” said Phillips. The study was published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

10 . Michael Yellowlees set off to complete a 5, 000-mile walk across Canada in the spring of 2021,wearing a kilt(短褶裙）and carrying a few items in a handcart,including a guitar. The 32-year-oldmusician from Dunkeld, Scotland,walked from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the east coast of Newfoundland on the edge of the North Atlantic with his pet dog, Luna, an Alaskan husky,by his side.

Speaking about the Scottish Highlands, Mr Yellowlees said, "It is a beautiful landscape,but with a strong sense of sadness because of the absence of woodland,wildlife and people. So I decided to walk across the great wildernesses of Canada to raise funds for Trees for Life,a Scottish rewilding   charity,and its work to restore(恢复）Scotland's Caledonian Forest. ”

The enthusiastic walker shared some of his experiences, including meeting black bears and hearing wolves cry loudly at night. He also mentioned a moment when he lost Luna after she jumped out of a little boat during a trip in the waterway section of the Trans Canada Trail in Northern Ontario.

Yet Mr Yellowlees was deeply touched by the warmth of the people along the way. In every town and village, people offered him food,shelter and donations. And he was accompanied into towns and cities by marching pipe bands and interviewed by newspapers, the radio and TV.

Steve Micklewright , chief executive officer of Trees for Life,said, “We followed Michael's journey across Canada with respect and admiration. Restoring native habitats and wildlife to the Highlands is a big task that no one can do alone. But Michael's extraordinary journey is proof that an individual can really make a difference. "

Bob Davidson,one of Michael Yellowlees' friends, said, “This is not a slow walk in the park,but a long march with heavy equipment on the rough road at an incredible pace. He's an amazing guy.”