英语科技文阅读-世界水资源的缺乏

世界水资源的缺乏World Water Shortage
A new study warns that about thirty percent of the world's people may not have enough water by the year 2025.
一项新的研究结果提出警告：到2025年，世界上将有30%的人没有足够的水饮用。

A private American organization called Population Action International did the new study. It says more than three-hundred-thirty-five-million people lack enough water now. The people live in twenty-eight countries. Most of the countries are in Africa or the Middle East.
这项研究是由美国一家名叫“人口行动”的私立机构进行的。

报告说现在世界上有三亿三千五百万人没有足够的水。

这些人主要分布在非洲或中东的28个国家。

P-A-I researcher Robert Engelman says by the year 2025, about three-thousand-million people may lack water. At least 18 more countries are expected to have severe water problems. The demand for water keeps increasing. Yet the amount of water on Earth stays the same.
人口行动组织的研究人罗博特.安格曼说，到2025年大约三十亿人缺水。

至少还有其他18个国家将可能面临同样严重的水短缺问题。

人类对水的需求不断上升，但地球上水的还是保持不变。

Mr. Engelman says the population in countries that lack water is growing faster than in other parts of the world. He says population growth in these countries will continue to increase.
安格曼先生说，水短缺的国家的人口增长率要高于世界其他地区的人口增长率。

他还说这些国家的人口出生率将持续增长。

The report says lack of water in the future may result in several problems. It may increase health problems. Lack of water often means drinking waters not safe. Mr. Engelman says there are problems all over the world because of diseases, such as cholera, which are carried in water. Lack of water may also result in more international conflict. Countries may have to compete for water in the future. Some countries now get sixty percent of their fresh water from other countries. This is true of Egypt, the Netherlands, Cambodia, Syria, Sudan, and Iraq. And the report says lack of water would affect the ability of developing to improve their economies. This is because new industries often need a large amount of water when they are beginning.
报告表明，在未来，水资源的缺乏可能会导致一些严重的后果。

首先它可能会产生更多的健康问题。

水资源的缺乏就意味着饮用水不再有保障。

安格曼先生说，诸如霍乱等在水中传播的疾病会使世界出现许多问题。

水缺乏也会引起更多的国际纷争。

各国可能由于水而发动战争。

现在有些国家，例如埃及，荷兰，柬埔寨，叙利亚，苏丹和伊拉克等，60%的纯净水是从国外进口的。

报告认为水缺乏将影响发展国家发展经济的能力。

这是因为新工业在开始阶段经常需要大量的水。

The Population Action International study gives several solutions to the water problem. One way, it says, is to find ways to use water for more than one purpose. Another way is to teach people to be careful not
to waste water. A third way is to use less water of agriculture.
人口行动组织的研究报告为世界的水短缺问题提出了几个解决的办法。

第一，找到多用途的用水方法。

第二，教育人们不要浪费水资源。

第三就是少用农业水。

The report also says long-term solutions to the water problem must include controls on population growth. It says countries cannot provide clean water unless they slow population growth by limiting the number of children people have.
报告同时表明，控制人口增长是长远解决水缺乏问题不可缺少的措施之一。

它说除非各国能通过限制生育来降低人口的增长，否则它们不可能提供干净的水。

Global warming a bigger threat to poor全球变暖加剧贫穷气候变化急待控制
Global warming, modelled on computer here, kills more people than terrorism
Global warming threatens to reverse human progress, and make unachievable all UN targets to reduce poverty(联合国所有减少贫穷的目标), according to some of the world's leading international and development groups.
In a report published today, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, WWF(英国牛津救济委员会、“绿色和平”组织、基督徒互援会、“地球之友”组织、世界野生动物基金组织) and 15 other groups say rich governments must immediately address(致力于) climate change to avoid even "obscene levels(无法忍受的程度)" of worldwide poverty.
"Food production, water supplies, public health and people's livelihoods are already being damaged and undermined," the report says. "There is no either/or approach possible(想找一个‘非此即彼'的办法是不可能的). The world must meet its commitments to achieve poverty reduction and also tackle climate change. The two are inextricably linked(二者的联系是难解难分的)."
The report, which draws on UN predictions of the effects of climate change in poor countries over the next 50 years, says poor countries will experience more flooding, declining food production, more disease and the deterioration or extinction of entire ecosystems(整个生态系统的退化甚至消失) on which many of the world's poorest people depend.
"Climate change needs to be addressed now. The poor will bear the brunt of the impacts. The frontline experience of many of us working in international development indicates that communities are having to combat more extreme weather conditions."
Climate change will play havoc（大范围的破坏；浩劫）with agriculture and water supplies and will increase diseases. "By 2025 the proportion of the world's population living in countries of significant
water stress will almost double, to 6 billion people. Tropical and sub-tropical areas will be hardest hit - those countries already suffering from food insecurity(食品短缺)".
Poor communities mostly do not need hi-tech solutions, but would most benefit from education, research and being shown how to farm better. The report says unchecked global warming(尚未得到抑制的全球变暖), more than wars or political upheaval(政变), will displace millions of people and destabilise many countries.
参考资料：[英文荟萃网]
The environmental protection is the most major problem which in the modern life the humanity faces. Must solve this problem must start from foundation. First, must massively propagandize, enhances people's consciousness with understanding, strengthens the environmental protection consciousness. Next, must carry on waste recovery use, reduces to forest-tree's felling. Also must strengthen to white pollution processing, little uses the plastic product. Finally, must make improvement to clean aspect. Causes the city's appearance to be neater. For Earth's tomorrow, we must start from the now diligently, will want the well local constable to protect the environment. To this us proposes as follows suggests: Implementation trash classification packed in bags. Like this not only can reduce the environmental sanitation worker's work load, but also can even better basically arrive makes use of waste, to reduce the pollution, saves the resources.
Everyone knows how the work week can take a toll on employees, but new research suggests the
five-day slog may have even broader impacts - on climate. After examining more than 40 years of temperature data taken from roughly 10,000 surface stations,
researchers from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and from the University of Reading in the U.K. found that temperature
differences between day and night appear to follow distinct five-days-on, two-days-off patterns.
The scientists checked the data for all possible natural influences such as the lunar cycle as well as random variations and found neither to be at play. The only factor that could be causing the fluctuations was the Monday-through-Friday grind, they concluded in a recently published report in the 人们普遍了解工作日是如何影响上班族的，然而最新研究表明这五天的劳作对气候的影响更加显著。

英国国家海洋及大气管理局和英国国立瑞丁大学的研究员分析了约一万个地面气象站40多年来采集的气温数据。

他们发现昼夜温差出现明显的五天大两天小的变化规律。

科学家们检查了所有可能造成
这种变化的自然因素，例如月亮运行周期和随机的变化，结果发现二者都不起作用。

他们在最近召开的全国科学院研讨会上发表的报告中总结说：唯一可能解释这种温差变化的就
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "There is nothing in nature that should cause these
data to be different," said Piers M de F. Forster, a meteorologist based at the University of Reading, England, who co-authored the study with NOAA's
Susan Solomon. "So whatever the cause we find has to be something that we're changing, ourselves."
The meteorologists propose the differences in
average temperatures between Saturdays as opposed to Thursdays, for example, may stem from
workweek-induced pollution. Forster explains that during the workweek more people commute and
more factories are in operation. Both contribute to the amount of particle pollution in the air. Particles can influence cloud cover, but the kind of particles released into the atmosphere can lead to different changes, says Forster. Lighter particles provide a surface for cloud droplets
to form. This leads to an increase in cloud cover,
which, in turn, can lead to an increase in temperature since clouds have an insulating effect. 是人们从周一到周五的辛苦劳
作。

英国国立瑞丁大学的气象学家
皮尔斯·
福雷斯特和国家海洋及大气管理局的苏姗·所罗门合作主持了这项研究。

福雷斯特说：“自然界中没有什么能够造成这些数据差异，所以不管原因是什么，它一定与我们自己正在改变的某种东西有关。

” 气象学家们提出平均气温的差异可能是工作日中产生的污染造成的，例如周六和周四相比，平均气温就有一定的差异。

福
雷斯特解释说在五天工作日
中，乘车上下班的人多，进行生产的工厂也多，这都会增加空气中的微粒含量，对大气造
成污染。

微粒会影响云量，但是释放到
大气中的不同颗粒会造成不同
的变化，福雷斯特说。

较轻的微粒能够提供云滴形成
所需要的界面，这样会增加云
量，进而导致气温的升高，因
为云有保温的作用。

二氧化碳作怪，海洋开始变“酸”
The world's oceans are slowly getting more acidic, say scientists. The researchers from California say the change is taking place in response to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 科学家们说世界上的海洋正在慢慢变“酸”。

来自加利福尼亚的研究人员称这种变化是由于大气中二氧化碳含量过高造成的。

The lowering of the waters' pH value is not great at the moment but could pose a serious threat to
current marine life if it continues, they warn.
Ken Caldeira and Michael Wickett, from the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, report their concerns in the journal Nature. Increasing use of fossil fuels means more carbon dioxide is going into the air, and most of it will
eventually be absorbed by seawater. Once in the water, it reacts to form carbonic acid.
Scientists believe that the oceans have already become slightly more acidic over the last century. But these researchers have tried to predict what will happen in the future by combining what we know about the history of the oceans with
computer models of climate change. "This level of acidity will get much more extreme in the future if we continue releasing CO2 into the
atmosphere," said Dr Caldeira. "And we predicted amounts of future acidity that exceed anything we saw over the last several
hundred million years, apart from perhaps after
rare catastrophic events such as asteroid
impacts."
If carbon dioxide release continues unabated,
ocean pH could be reduced by as much as 0.77
units, the authors warn.
It is not absolutely clear what that means for
marine life, however.
Most organisms live near the surface, where the 他们警告说，目前海水pH 值下降还不是非常严重，但是如果继续下降的话会对现存的海洋生物造成严重的威胁。

来自美国罗兰士利弗摩亚国家实验室的肯·卡尔代罗和迈克尔·维
克特在《自然》杂志上提出了他
们对此事的关注。

越来越多的石油消耗意味着更多的二氧化碳被排放到空气中，而且大部分最终将被海水吸收。

二氧化碳一旦进入水中，就会发生反应形成碳酸。

科学家们认为海洋的酸性已经比上个世纪稍微大了一点。

这些研究者们结合所知的海洋历
史以及气候变化的电脑模型，试
图预测将来的变化。

“如果我们继续向大气中排放二
氧化碳的话，将来的酸性浓度会
远远超标。

”卡尔代罗博士说。

“而且我们估计将来酸的总量会比过去几亿年中人类所见到的任何东西都大，更不用说可能发生类似小行星撞击地球等罕见的大灾难之后了。

” 研究者们警告说，如果不减少二氧化碳的排放量，海洋的pH 值可能会降低0.77个单位。

尽管这对海洋生命来说意味着什
greatest pH change would be expected to occur, but deep-ocean lifeforms may be more sensitive to
pH changes.
Coral reefs and other organisms whose skeletons or shells contain calcium carbonate may be
particularly affected, the team speculate. They
could find it much more difficult to build these
structures in water with a lower pH.
In recent years some people have suggested
deliberately storing carbon dioxide from power
stations in the deep ocean as a way of curbing
global warming. But Dr Caldeira said that such a strategy should now be re-considered.
"Previously, most experts had looked at ocean
absorption of carbon dioxide as a good thing -
because in releasing CO2 into the atmosphere we warm the planet; and when CO2 is absorbed by the ocean, it reduces the amount of greenhouse warming.
么还不是很清楚。

大多数生物生活在海洋表面，而海洋表面正是pH 值预期变化最
大的地方，但是深海生物可能对pH 值的变化更加敏感。

研究组推测，珊瑚礁和其它骨架或外壳中含有碳酸钙的生物受到的影响可能会格外明显，在pH 值较低的水域中它们很难形成这些结构。

最近的几年中，有人蓄意建议将
发电站释放的二氧化碳储藏到深
海中，以此来抑制全球变暖。

但是卡尔代罗博士说现在应该重
新考虑这种策略。

“以前，
大多数专家都将海洋吸收二氧化碳看作一件好事——因为将二氧化碳释放到大气中会使大
气变暖，然而当二氧化碳被海洋吸收后，温室效应就会降低。

”
空中有群水做的“象
Elephants in the Sky
A fluffy cumulous cloud 想知道一朵云有多重吗？还有
飓风？一位气象学家做了大概
的估算，结果可能会让你大吃
一惊哦。

让我们先从一团很普通的蓬松
的白色积雨云算起。

一朵积雨
Ever wonder how much a cloud weighs? What about a hurricane? A meteorologist has done some estimates and the results might surprise you. Let's start with a very simple white puffy cloud - a cumulus cloud. How much does the water in a
cumulus cloud weigh? Peggy LeMone, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, did the numbers. "The water in the little cloud weighs about 550
tons," she calculates. "Or if you want to convert it to something that might be a little more
meaningful … think of elephants."
Assume an elephant weighs about six tons, she
says, that would mean that water inside a typical cumulous cloud would weigh about one hundred elephants.
The thought of a hundred elephants-worth of water suspended in the sky begs another question - what keeps it up there?
"First of all, the water isn't in elephant sized
particles, it's in tiny tiny tiny particles," explains
LeMone. And those particles float on the warmer air that's rising below. But still, the concept of so much
water floating in the sky was surprising even to a meteorologist like LeMone.
"I had no idea how much a cloud would weigh, weighs the equivalent of approximately 200,000 elephants, a meteorologist calculates.
云所含的水有多重呢？科罗拉多州玻尔得国家大气研究中心
的资深科学家佩吉·莱蒙算出
了一组数据。

她推算：“一小片云大约含有
550吨水。

如果你想把它转换
成更加实际一点的东西，那就
想想大象吧。

” 她说，假设一头大象有6吨重，那么一朵普通的积雨云所含的水就相当于大约100头大象那
么重。

一想到100头大象那么重的水
悬在空中，你不得不考虑另一个问题——是什么让它牢牢的挂在天空中的呢? “首先，构成水的粒子并没有大象那么大，而是非常非常地小。

”莱蒙解释说。

而且那些微粒漂浮在正在上升的暖空气上面。

但是尽管如此，想到有这么多水漂浮在空中，哪怕像莱蒙这样的气象学家也
会觉得不可思议的。

“当我刚开始计算的时候，我真
的不知道一朵云有多重。

”她
说。

那么一块儿比“蓬松的”积雨云
大10倍的暴风云中含有的水相当于多少只大象呢？莱蒙再
次得出数据：大约是20万只。

actually, when I started the calculations," she
says. So how many elephant units of water are inside a
big storm cloud … 10 times bigger all the way
around than the "puffy" cumulus cloud? Again,
LeMone did the numbers: About 200,000
elephants. Now, ratchet up the calculations for a hurricane about the size of Missouri and the figures get
really massive. "What we're doing is weighing the water in one cubic meter theoretically pulled from a cloud and then multiplying by the number of meters in a
whole hurricane," she explains.
The result? Forty million elephants. That means
the water in one hurricane weighs more than all
the elephants on the planet. Perhaps even more
than all the elephants that have ever lived on the
planet. 现在，逐步计算像密苏里飓风那样的热带风暴的含水量，数
据真是大的惊人。

“我们正在做的是从理论上测量一立方米的云所含的水的重量，然后再乘以整个飓风的体积。

”她解释说。

知道结果吗?相当于4千万头大象。

这就意味着飓风中所含的水比地球上所有的大象加到
一起还要重，也许会超过地球
上曾经有过的所有大象体重的总和。

世界最低点面临死亡危机 约以巴三方联手拯救死海
Jordan, Israel, Palestinians join forces to save Dead Sea (2003)
Jordan, Israel and the
Palestinians are hoping that world
leaders gathered on the
shores of the Dead Sea this weekend will back their efforts to help save the lowest body of water on Earth.
Over the past three years the Dead Sea has decreased by three meters and the whole 约旦、以色列和巴勒斯坦希望本周末
齐聚死海海岸参加世界经济论坛的各国领导人能够对他们的计划提供支持：拯救死海--这个地球的最低点。

专家称，在过去三年中，死海的水位
已经下降了3米。

由于约旦河的水源
被改道以为灌溉所用，无法注入死海，因此同60年代相比，目前整个死海
水域的水量已经不足原先的三分之一。

area is currently one third less than it used to be in the 1960s due to the diversion of the Jordan River water for irrigation, experts
said.
A goldmine for potash extractors and a magnet for tourists who come to bathe in its salty waters, the Dead Sea could disappear in 50 years.
"The Dead Sea basin is facing an environmental decline and if it continues like this it will hit a catastrophe," Jordanian
Water Minister Hazem Nasser cautioned.
To contain the damage, Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian officials will submit a project to channel water through a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, at the weekend
meeting here of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Nasser warned saving the mineral-rich Dead Sea was a large-scale project that would not just happen overnight.
"It needs a lot of studies and preparation
and huge financial resources," he said.
"We have to do a series of studies first:
environmental, social, technical. We did a
pre-feasibility study and we are now
shooting for a full feasibility study."
The project, which the sides hope to fund
through the World Bank and the private
sector, is estimated to cost 1.5 billion
dollars. 死海海水中蕴含大量碳酸钾；同时还是旅游胜地，吸引众多游客来此泡盐水浴。

但是照此发展下去，未来50年内死海将会永远消失。

约旦水利部长那瑟警告说："死海正面临环境恶化。

如果继续照此发展下去
的话，
灾难就会降临，死海将会消失。

" 为了化解危机，环绕死海的三个国家：约旦、以色列和巴勒斯坦的官员们将会在本周末的世界经济论坛上提交一份计划，启动从红海通过运河往死海注水的工程。

那瑟说，此项拯救死海（这片矿藏丰富的海域）的计划是一项大规模的工程，不会在朝夕之间一蹴而就。

他说：
"我们必须首先做一系列研究工作：环境的、社会的、技术的。

我们
已经做过一个前期的可行性研究，现
在我们正在努力进行一项全面的可行性研究。

" 约旦、以色列和巴勒斯坦三方都希望
这项计划的实施能够从世界银行和私营行业中获得基金，预计将高达15亿美元。

译者注： 死海是位于巴勒斯坦、以色列和约旦之间的一片美丽而又神奇的水域，是一个内陆盐湖。

因湖水中盐分极高、生物无法在里面生存而得名。

死海的水面是地球上陆地的最低点，水面平均低于海平面约400米，因此死海还
有"地球肚脐"的别称。

约旦河从其北
部注入。

科学家研究有新招 从火山样本推测火星文明
Scientists Seek Mars Clues in Chilean Volcano (2002)
Scientists hope that a remote lake on a
dormant Chilean
volcano can provide clues to what life may have been like in a
far more distant place -- the planet Mars. A 10-member team placed special plates in the lake on Licancabur volcano, at an altitude of 20,000 feet ，on Sunday to
measure the effects of ultraviolet light on
organisms living there.
The scientists, mostly from the United
States, think learning how Licancabur organisms protect themselves may help researchers understand how life survived on early Earth and perhaps on early Mars as well.
The damaging effects of UV radiation
intensify at altitude and the air is very thin. And the lake is covered with ice most of the year, as would have been bodies of water on Mars. "If there was life on Mars 3.5 billion years ago, it could have used defense mechanisms similar to those used by the organisms at Licancabur volcano to 在智利火山的顶端，
有一个静谧的湖泊。

近来，科学家发现了它的新价值--也许，它能告诉人们在更遥远的火星，早期的生命是如何存在的。

11月10日，一个由10名科学家组成
的小组在海拔2万英尺的利坎卡武尔火
山顶端湖泊中放入了特殊的测量仪板，来测试紫外线照射当地的有机生物所产生的效果。

以美国科学家为主的许多科学家都认为，研究利坎卡武尔火山的有机生物如何自我保护能够启发人们认识在早期的地球，生物是如何生存下来的，甚至也可以由此类推到早期的火星生命形态上
去。

在利坎卡武尔火山顶，紫外线辐射相当密集，杀伤力很强。

空气也因为海拔高而非常稀薄，湖面上常年结着厚厚的冰层，与火星上的水域环境非常相似。

研究小组的负责人纳塔莉·卡布罗尔说:"如果35亿年前火星上有生物的话，情况应该与利坎卡武尔火山顶生物生存
survive," said team leader Nathalie
Cabrol. The group, which includes science
researchers from NASA and the SETI
Institute, planned to spend two days at
the lake, but weather conditions forced
them to give up some of their research, which included a planned dive into the
frigid lake.
The mission also included geological
experiments in the area around the
volcano and testing a two-wheeled vehicle called "MARVIN," which may be used in
future Mars missions.
One of the group members said the experiments, were "very promising" but sediment and water samples would have to be analyzed in a laboratory before
conclusions could be drawn. Another
expedition will recover the UV plates next
year.
下来所运用的防御机制大致相同。

"
这个研究小组的成员主要来自美国国家
宇航局（National Aeronautics and Space Administration ）和美国寻找地外智能生命研究所(Search for Exterritorial Intelligence Institute, 简称SETI)。

他们原计划在湖边度过两天，但迫于天气原因不得不放弃了部分研究项目，其中一项计划还要潜入到刺骨的湖水中完成。

原计划还包括在该火山地区进行地址勘测，以及测试一种名叫"MARVIN"的两轮运输车，这种车是为日后在火星进行勘测时使用而设计的。

一位研究组成员认为这次实验"非常有
前景"，
但沉淀物和水样必须在实验室中经过化验才能得出实验的最后结论。

明年，另一支研究队将被派往该地，收回紫外线测量仪板。

海明威笔下美景不再 乞力马扎罗的雪即将消失
Kilimanjaro Snow Cap May Melt Soon
The snow cap of
Mount Kilimanjaro,
famed in literature
and beloved by
tourists, first formed some 11,000 years ago, but will be gone in two decades, according to researchers who say the ice fields on Africa's highest mountain shrank 乞力马扎罗山上的雪形成于大约11000多年前，不论在文坛上，还是在旅游观光业中，它都始终保持着一种独特的魅力。

然而，科学家却告诉我们，在过去的一个世纪中，这座非洲最高山峰的"雪帽"已经"缩水"了80%，再过
二十年，
乞力马扎罗山上的雪景就要消失了。

by 80 percent in the past century.
Lonnie G. Thompson of Ohio State
University said measurements using ice
corings and modern navigation satellites show that the oldest ice layers on the
famed mountain were deposited during an extremely wet period starting about
11,700 years ago.
The mountain is enshrined in literature,
most notably Ernest Hemingway's "The
Snows of Kilimanjaro" and some ancient beliefs in Africa hold the mountain to be a
sacred place. But a temperature rise in recent years is eroding the 150-foot-high blocks of ice that
gave Kilimanjaro its distinctive white cap. "The ice will be gone by about 2020," said Thompson. The diminishing ice already has reduced the amount of water in some Tanzanian rivers and the government fears that when Kilimanjaro is bald of snow the tourists will stop coming.
"Kilimanjaro is the number one foreign
currency earner for the government of
Tanzania," said Thompson. "It has its own
international airport and some 20,000
tourists every year. The question is how many will come if there are no ice fields on the mountain."
Africa was not alone in the global drought.
Thompson said other records show that civilizations during this period collapsed in 俄亥俄州立大学的朗尼·汤普逊说，通过冰层取样和现代卫星定位系统的测量，研究人员发现这座名山上最古老的冰层是在约11700年前一段特别潮湿的时期形成的。

在文学史上，大名鼎鼎的海明威曾著有《乞力马扎罗的雪》一书，从而让人们对这片土地心存一份特殊的情结，再加上一些古老的非洲传说，更是令这座山显得神秘而令人向往。

但是近几年来，由于气温的不断上升，
乞力马扎罗山顶上厚达150英尺的积
雪正在一点一点溶化。

汤普逊预言说：
"所有的冰层将在2020年融化掉。

"由于积雪大大减少，长久以来依靠这座山积雪溶化供给的坦桑
尼亚境内，
一些河流的水量已经开始减少。

当地政府担心，当"雪帽"被摘掉，当地的旅游业就会遭遇灭顶之灾。

汤普逊还说："乞力马扎罗的旅游资源是坦桑尼亚政府最主要的外汇来源。

当地建有国际机场，每年约有2万游客慕
名而至。

如今的问题是，如果没有了山顶积雪，恐怕就没人会去了。

" 在全世界，并不只有非洲遭受了这样的一种干旱枯竭。

汤普逊说统计表明，同
India, the Middle East and South America. Researchers put markers atop the ice field
blocks in 1962 and Thompson said
measurements using satellites show the
summit of the ice has been lowered by
about 56 feet in 40 years. The margin of the ice also has retreated more than six
feet in the past two years.
"That's more than two meter's worth of ice lost from a wall 164 feet (50 meters) high," said Thompson. "That's an enormous
amount of ice."
期的文明在印度、
中东和南美洲地区都出现了衰退现象。

汤普逊说，1962年研究者在冰层上做了标志，现在发现，山顶的积雪厚度在40年中下降了56英尺。

仅仅两年时间，冰层的边缘就"缩水"了至少6英
尺。

他说："这绝不是一面50米（164英
尺）高的冰墙降低2米那么简单，这个数字意味着大量的冰雪已经消失了。

" 环保终见成效，南极臭氧空洞50年内"填满"
Ozone hole to start shrinking and will close in 50 years, say scientists
(2002)
The hole in the
ozone layer over Antarctica is about to start shrinking and
will close by 2050,
Australian researchers say.
Government scientists in T asmania said scientific data showed the level of ozone-depleting chlorine in the atmosphere was declining because of the
澳大利亚一研究小组9月17日向全世
界报告了一条好消息：南极洲上空的臭氧层空洞呈现出缩小的趋势，预计到
2050年之前，这个巨大空洞就可以完
全恢复了。

据塔斯马尼亚的科学家介绍，数据表明在大气层的消耗臭氧物质中，氯的含量正在下降。

这应该归功于自1987年通过《蒙特利尔议定书》以来，人们在冰
ban on the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in fridges and air conditioners, agreed under the Montreal Protocol in 1987.
Dr Paul Fraser, the chief atmospheric
research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation, said: "This is big news. We have been waiting for this. We think the trend is definite now. It is very significant." Dr Fraser said that after the ban was adopted, the atmospheric level of chlorine continued to rise, peaking in 2000. "That was simply due to old refrigerators and old air-conditioners in cars," he says.
Since then, the level had stabilised and was now declining, albeit slowly, Dr Fraser
said. He predicted that the hole in the
ozone layer would contract steadily from about 2005 and disappear by mid-century, although the ozone would be vulnerable for a decade.
Under the Montreal Protocol, developing
countries committed themselves to halving consumption and production of CFCs by 2005 and achieving an 85 per cent cut by 2007. The hole in the ozone layer, which protects Earth from the Sun's ultraviolet
rays, was first detected nearly 30 years
ago. It was then three times the size of
Australia, itself covering nearly 3 million
square miles.
箱和空调设备中对吞噬臭氧的罪魁祸首--氟氯碳化物(CFCs) （一种含有氯、氟、碳三种元素的有机化合物，俗称"氟里昂"）实行了全面的控制。

澳洲科学及工业研究机构（CSIRO ）大气研究的主要负责人保罗·弗雷泽博士说："这是个激动人心的消息。

我们一直盼望着这一天。

毫无疑问现在我们正在朝着这个方向前进，这个意义非比寻常。

"
弗雷泽博士还介绍说，即便在控制使用
氟里昂后，
大气中的氯含量还是在不断攀升，
并在2000年达到了顶峰。

他说："这主要是由于冰箱和车载空调的普及所造成的。

"
直到2000年以后，氯气含量才停止增加并呈现缓慢下降的趋势。

弗雷泽博士预测说，
臭氧空洞将于2005年开始收缩变小，直到本世纪中期被完全填满，
但填满后仍有十年属于比较容易被破坏的过渡期。

根据
《蒙特利尔议定书》，到2005年，发展中国家氟里昂产品的消耗量和生产量都将减半，到2007年则减少85%，以此来保护我们的大气层。

人们是在约30年前发现这个臭氧层空洞的。

而臭氧层的作用主要是保护我们不直接受到太阳的紫外线辐射。

30年来，臭氧层的这个空洞面积达到澳大利亚本土面积的3倍。

而澳大利亚的本土面积为300万平方英里。