4 . 阅读短文，在空白处填入适当的内容或括号内单词的正确形式。

Although Start of Autumn, the 13th traditional Chinese solar term, often indicates the     1     (begin) of autumn, heat waves will not come to an end. The period of high temperatures,    2     (call) “Autumn Tiger”, usually lasts for about 30 days. Because of decreasing precipitation(降水), it is even hotter during this period than Major Heat. As the saying goes, “If it rains     3    the day of Start of Autumn, a good harvest is expected.”

7 . 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.”

1. What do the figures in paragraph 3 show?

A．Nyangai is large in area.

B．Nyangai has a long history.

C．Nyangai is being destroyed by humans.

D．Nyangai is suffering a lot from a sea-level rise.

2. What does the underlined word “vulnerable” in paragraph 4 mean?

A．Far-reaching.	B．Protected.
C．Easy to be attacked.	D．Difficult to keep in touch with.

3. How does Gabriel Jaka feel about people’s future life in Nyangai?

A．Worried.	B．Calm.
C．Unconcerned.	D．Hopeful.

4. What’s the purpose of the text?

A．To introduce a poor fisherman.

B．To call for actions to fight climate change.

C．To present a fisherman’s old hometown.

D．To show the destruction of the forest.

9 . Hotter, drier conditions over the past four decades have been decreasing the rainforest birds’ body size while lengthening their wings, a study published in the journal Science Advances said on Friday. “This maybe an adaptation to hotter temperatures. Even in the middle of the primitive Amazon rainforest, we are seeing the global effects of climate change caused by people,” said Vitek Jirinec, lead author on the study.

The scientists have studied measurements and weigh-ins of 77 different bird species in the Amazon rainforest since the early 1980s. Nearly all of the bird species have gotten lighter as time goes on. On average, most species became about 2% lighter every decade. These birds don’t vary that much in size,” said co-author Philip Stouffer, a professor of conservation biology at Louisiana State University. “But when everyone in the population is a couple of grams smaller, it’s significant.”

The researchers found that bird species living in higher parts of the forest—as opposed to closer to the forest floor —saw the most pronounced changes in terms of body composition. Those are the species most exposed to high temperatures. Longer wings and smaller bodies mean that birds have to useless energy to move around, helping them stay cool.

Brian Weeks of the University of Michigan in 2019 researched the average sizes of 52 species of migratory birds in North America from 1978 to 2016. He also found all of them had smaller bodies and longer wings in 2016. This is another example of climate change-human actions globally—affecting a fundamental thing such as the size and shape of the birds. The same effect is likely to be true of other species across the world living in extreme environments.

1. What does the new study find about the birds in the Amazon rainforest?

A．They are flying much higher.	B．They have been physically longer.
C．They are more flexible than adaptable	D．They have got smaller and longer-winged.

2. How did researchers conduct their study?

A．By analyzing the collected data.	B．By referring to historical records.
C．By observing birds in the forests.	D．By cooperating with other research groups.

3. What made the birds living in higher parts of the forest change most?

A．Less food available.	B．Decreased forest area.
C．Most exposure to the heat.	D．Inadequate shelter from storms.

4. What is the function of the last paragraph?

A．To introduce a new topic.

B．To further stress bad effects of humans.

C．To popularize some knowledge about birds.

D．To tell the difference between the two studies.