1 . For nearly as long as the modern computer has existed, it has been used to forecast the weather. First used during World War II to simulate (模拟) nuclear weapons, computers were soon adopted to simulate the future state of the atmosphere, creating the modern discipline of weather prediction. Although that discipline has grown ever more complicated and now produces reliable forecasts several weeks in advance, its approach remains the same: using large amounts of calculating power to solve equations (方程).
Over the past year, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to change that. Tech companies including Google and Nvidia have trained AI models to predict the weather up to 10 days in advance, with an accuracy equaling or even topping traditional models — and with far less calculation overhead. Rather than solving equations, these AI models predict the near future based on patterns learned through training on 40 years of past weather, which is recorded by the traditional model of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the world’s top weather agency. Once trained, the AI models can work out a forecast on a computer in 1 minute rather than taking 2 hours to run on a supercomputer.
ECMWF has already begun to produce its own AI forecast, and other weather agencies are eager to catch up. The new models aren’t perfect. They struggle to predict certain essential features—hurricane intensity, for example. But AI forecasters will only improve as they begin to learn from direct weather observations collected by sensors, not just data already passed through existing models. Besides, their speed could allow agencies to run them over and over, as they capture in the atmosphere the full spread of uncertainty, be it necessary or unnecessary for weather prediction.
No one expects traditional weather prediction to disappear. Another branch, climate models, an extension of weather forecasting, for example, rely on equation solving just as traditional weather models do. But in the long term, the output of climate models may itself become training data for a climate forecasting AI, which might ultimately do a better job than the traditional models.
1. How do AI models predict weather?| A．By running on a supercomputer. | B．By recording traditional models. |
| C．By working on the existing data. | D．By making massive calculations. |
| A．They may be overly operated. | B．They may be slow to respond. |
| C．They may confuse natural disasters. | D．They may bring unfair competitions. |
| A．They lack accurate data. | B．They need intensive training. |
| C．They work in a traditional way. | D．They determine weather forecasting. |
| A．How Can AI Aid Atmosphere Study? |
| B．Should We Trust AI to Predict Hurricanes? |
| C．Weather Forecast Is Having an AI Moment |
| D．Tech Giants Are Competing in Data Collection |
1. What’s the weather like now?
| A．Sunny. | B．Rainy. | C．Windy. |
| A．Watch movies. | B．Play cards. | C．Play badminton. |
1. What’s the weather like in the morning of May and June in Costa Rica?
| A．Cloudy and warm. | B．Rainy and cold. | C．Dry and hot. |
| A．There are more interesting things. |
| B．The weather is better. |
| C．The prices are lower. |
| A．In January. | B．In May. | C．In December. |
| A．From February to April. | B．From May to June. | C．From July to August. |
1. What has the weather been like recently?
| A．Cloudy. | B．Rainy. | C．Sunny. |
| A．Buying a new phone. | B．Taking an umbrella. | C．Traveling by car. |
5 . Amphibians are animals that can live both on land and in water. A new global assessment has found that 41% of amphibian species that scientists have studied are threatened with extinction. That’s up from 39% reported in the last assessment in 2004.
The study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that the loss of habitat from the legal and illegal expansion of farming and ranching (放牧) contributes most to the extinction risk of amphibians worldwide. But a growing percentage of amphibian species are now also pushed to the edge of extinction by novel diseases and climate change, the study found.
Amphibians have distinct life stages that each often require separate habitats, so they can be disturbed by changes in either water or land environments, said University of Texas biologist Michael Ryan, who was not involved in the study. They are also at risk because of their delicate skin. Most amphibians absorb oxygen to breathe through their skin, and so they do not have scales (鳞), feathers or fur to protect them. Chemical pollution, bacteria and fungal (真菌的) infections impact them quickly, as do heightened swings in temperature and dampness levels due to climate change.
For example, frogs are active usually at night. If it’s too hot, they won’t come out even at night because they would lose too much water through their skin, said co-author and researcher Patricia Burrowes. But remaining in sheltered resting places limits frogs’ ability to eat and to produce.
Juan Manuel Guayasamin, a frog biologist at the University San Francisco of Quito, Ecuador, said that advances in technology to track animals and climate variations allowed the new study to use much more precise data than the 2004 assessment. “We have a much better understanding of some risks,” said Guayasamin.
The study identified the greatest concentrations of threatened amphibian species in several biodiversity hot spots, including the Caribbean islands, the tropical Andes, Madagascar and Sri Lanka. Other locations with large numbers of threatened amphibians include Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, southern China and the southeastern United States.
1. What has the new study found?| A．Amphibian populations are now extinct. |
| B．The number of amphibians is rising slightly. |
| C．The extinction risk of amphibians has declined. |
| D．More amphibian species are endangered than before. |
| A．Habitat loss. | B．Illegal hunting. | C．Novel diseases. | D．Climate change. |
| A．The unusual living habits of frogs. | B．The unique features of the frog skin. |
| C．The effect of climate change on amphibians. | D．The urgency of protecting amphibians’ habitats. |
| A．Its methods are debatable. | B．Its findings are more reliable. |
| C．It needs to be better organized. | D．It covers wide geographical areas. |
6 . How is the weather today?
| A．Rainy. | B．Sunny. | C．Windy. |
7 . The recent floods in Pakistan have sub-merged a third of the country and left more than 1,100 people dead. It is not the only part of the world to have suffered extreme weather this year. Early on, Australia was hit with unheard-of rain and heat. By the summer, east Africa was suffering its fourth year of drought. Meanwhile, temperature records were broken in cities across Europe, and rivers there ran drier than at any point for 500 years. A 70-day heatwave across much of China saw temperatures regularly exceeding 40℃, with the country’s two largest lakes dropping to their lowest recorded heights.
Attributing (把……归因于) any single weather event to climate change is a complicated business. Part of the difficulty reflects the complex mechanisms of Earth’s climate, where continuous warming is the background against which many other patterns play out.
One of the most powerful sources of natural climate variability is the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a phenomenon in which the climate all around the tropics moves into one of two extreme states. When the trade winds blow more weakly across the Pacific than usual, the warm water remains in the eastern Pacific, causing more rainfall in that part of the world, an event known as an El Nino. When the winds blow particularly strongly, more warm water gathers in the western Pacific, and more cold water comes up from the depths off the coast of South America, known as La Nina.
What is happening in Pakistan is likely to be a disastrous combination of multiple factors. A hotter planet means there is more moisture (湿气) in the air, leading to more extreme rainfall and greater risks of flooding. This means La Nina-caused rainfall can be unusually deadly. Global warming also has an indirect effect, as high temperatures experienced in the Himalayas earlier this year sped up the melting of glaciers (冰川) and overloaded rivers. It is also possible that air pollution in the area, which complicates air-circulation patterns, may have a role to play as well.
A pressing concern is the impact the increased flooding and severe droughts will have on a world where resources are already sapped by a rapid running of disasters. “We’re already not coping and it’s only getting worse,” says Maarten, director of the climate centre for the International Red Cross.
Equally fraught are questions of responsibility. Whether or not specific disasters were made more likely to occur by ENSO, climate change is doubtless playing a role in increasing their severity. This implicates richer countries most responsible for historic pollution, which have thus far largely been spared the worst consequences of their emissions.
1. The author lists a range of extreme events at the beginning to _________.| A．predict the ending | B．raise the issue behind |
| C．highlight an opinion | D．illustrate an argument |
| A．Loss of ice due to the greenhouse effect. |
| B．Harmful gases let off into the atmosphere. |
| C．Trade winds blowing more weakly across the Pacific. |
| D．More moisture in the air caused by high temperatures. |
| A．conserved | B．consumed | C．shared | D．destroyed |
| A．Urgent priority should be given to climatic change. |
| B．Specific disasters are undoubtedly linked to La Nina. |
| C．Governments have taken measures to deal with the current situation. |
| D．Richer countries have taken the responsibility for the environment. |
| A．Cloudy. | B．Rainy. | C．Windy. |
9 . The streets, sidewalks and roofs of cities all absorb heat during the day, making some urban areas across the United States up to 6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than rural ones during the day—and 22 degrees F hotter at night. These “urban heat islands” can also develop underground as the city heat spreads downward, beneath the surface. And basements, subway tunnels and other underground infrastructure also constantly bleed heat into the surrounding earth, creating hotspots. Now the underground heat is building up as the planet warms.
According to a new study of downtown Chicago, underground hotspots may threaten the very same structures that emit the heat in the first place. Such temperature changes make the ground around them expand and contract (收缩) enough to cause potential damage. “Without anyone realizing it, the city of Chicago’s downtown was deforming,” says the study’s author Alessandro F. Rotta Loria, a civil and environmental engineer at Northwestern University.
The findings, published in Communications Engineering, expose a “silent hazard (危险)” to civil infrastructure in cities with soft er ground — especially those near water — Rotta Loria says. “There might have been structural issues caused by this underground climate change that happened, and we didn’t even realize,” he adds. While not an immediate or direct danger to human lives, this previously unknown effect highlights the impacts of a lesser-known component of climate change.
Similar to climate change above the surface, these underground changes occur over long periods of time. “These effects took decades, a century, to develop,” Rotta Loria says, adding that elevated underground temperatures would likewise take a long time to dissipate (逐渐消失) on their own.
But other researchers interviewed for this story all say this wasted energy could also be recycled, presenting an opportunity to both cool the subsurface and save on energy costs. Subway tunnels and basements could be updated with technologies to recapture the heat. For example, water pipes could be installed to run through underground hotspots and pick up some of the heat energy.
1. What can we learn about the “urban heat islands”?| A．They can develop underground structures. |
| B．They are impacted by global warming. |
| C．They can destroy the ground around. |
| D．They only exist in the United States. |
| A．To discuss structural issues. |
| B．To categorize climate change. |
| C．To explain underground heat. |
| D．To emphasize the neglected reality. |
| A．The future of tunnels and basements. |
| B．The reusing approaches of heat energy. |
| C．The cost of maintaining structures. |
| D．The evolution of underground environment. |
| A．Warming Underground, Weakening Surface |
| B．A Silver Lining of Global Warming |
| C．Urban Silent Islands in the Making |
| D．A Silent Crisis in Downtown Chicago |
10 . Verkhoyansk, a town in northeastern Siberia, about 6 miles within the Arctic Circle, recorded a temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) on June 20. 2020, likely setting a new record for the hottest temperature recorded that far north.
The new record comes as Siberia—and the Asian continent as a whole—have experienced unusually warm conditions since the start of this year. The whole region has been off-the-charts warm lately. And while it’s difficult to know the impact of climate change on individual records or temperatures in any given season, experts say the developments are part of a broader warming trend that has been documented across the globe.
The sudden movement of heat is being caused by high-pressure ridge (脊)of air—sometimes called “heat dome (穹)” that is blanketing the area. When this happens, air gets squeezed into one location and sinks, pushing warm temperatures down to the surface.
The high-pressure ridge also prevents clouds from forming, so sunshine comes through without being weakened by clouds. North of the Arctic Circle when that temperature was observed, they had 24 hours of daylight, so they were receiving solar energy for those entire 24 hours.
The town of Verkhoyansk is known for having the biggest extremes between winter and summer than any other city in the world, with their average high temperature minus 47 degrees Fahrenheit in winter In June and July, their average temperature is close to 70 degrees. In their climate history, they’ve been above 90 degrees over 150 times, and above 95 degrees at least dozen times.
“Since the start of the year, we’ve been noticing that Asia— particularly northern Asia, like Russia—has been extremely warm,” —said Ahira Sanchez-Lugo, a climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information. Forecasts suggest that this part of Siberia could see at least another week of above-average temperatures before things stabilize. But conditions in Asia have been warmer than usual for most of 2020.
1. What does the underlined part “off-the-charts” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Entirely. | B．Seriously. | C．Extremely. | D．Slightly. |
| A．It is a blanket covering a town. |
| B．It prevents the sun from heating the surface. |
| C．It moves fast and carries heat away. |
| D．It presses heat down and keeps solar energy down on the earth. |
| A．Verkhoyansk is the hottest town in the world. |
| B．The largest extremes in Verkhoyansk are more than 95 degrees. |
| C．Northern Asia takes the lead in global warming. |
| D．The average high temperature in Verkhoyansk is minus 47 degrees Fahrenheit. |
| A．Verkhoyansk is a special town in Russia. |
| B．Verkhoyansk hit its highest temperature in history. |
| C．Verkhoyansk experienced the worst weather conditions. |
| D．Verkhoyansk witnessed the highest temperature in the world. |
