雅思阅读 037 · Climate Change Is Supercharging El Niños

改编自 Scientific American（Andrea Thompson, 2026）。题型：段落信息匹配 + T/F/NG + 填空。难度：中等偏上（Passage 2，约 800 词）。

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🎧 课文朗读音频（约 1 分钟）

正文 Passage

A. A blockbuster El Niño

We're in the midst of a blockbuster El Niño that could become the strongest in living memory. It and other very strong, recent El Niños are much stronger than those in the past as the result of human-caused climate change, a new study in Science shows.

The new evidence is "a critical piece of the puzzle" in understanding how rising global temperatures are altering this influential natural climate cycle, says climate scientist Kim Cobb, director of Brown University's Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, who wasn't involved with the study.

B. The Galápagos advantage

Climate models have given mixed signals about whether El Niño events could become stronger with climate change. Physical evidence from fossilised corals in the western and central Pacific have bolstered the argument that climate change is strengthening El Niño. But the new study used corals from what is arguably the best place to look — the Galápagos Islands in the eastern tropical Pacific.

"It lies in the heart of where El Niño has some of its strongest impacts," says study co-author Julia Cole, a University of Michigan climate scientist.

C. How El Niño works

An El Niño is part of a larger cycle called the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a choreographed dance between the ocean and the atmosphere. In its so-called neutral state, trade winds blow from east to west across the tropical Pacific, piling warm water up near Indonesia and Australia and allowing deep, cold water to well up along the coast of South America.

During an El Niño, those winds slacken, and the warm water slides eastward, leading to waters becoming generally one to two degrees Celsius above normal in the area around the Galápagos. In a strong El Niño year, they can reach more than two degrees C above normal. This year's event is predicted to hit three degrees above normal.

D. Global consequences

These shifts in ocean temperature change where heat is released into the atmosphere, which alters global wind patterns in ways that have huge effects around the world, such as leading to drought and wildfires in Indonesia and wetter weather across the southern U.S.

It is those costly effects that make it so important to understand how El Niño is changing and if it will continue to do so in the future.

E. Corals as climate records

Handily, corals leave an indirect record of the temperature of the water around them in their growth bands, akin to tree rings. Corals grow their calcium carbonate skeletons by pulling calcium from the ocean water but can substitute the element strontium if needed. They tend to do that when waters are cooler. Likewise, the ratio of two different isotopes of oxygen in the coral changes with the water temperature.

Cole and her team spent years searching for boulders of fossilised coral that had washed up on the beaches of the Galápagos to take samples that spanned at least a couple of decades, providing "windows" into points in the past, as Cole puts it.

F. The findings

The researchers found that temperature swings recorded in Galápagos corals have intensified by 36 percent over the past four decades, far beyond anything seen in previous centuries. Along with other coral results elsewhere in the Pacific, this provides some of the strongest evidence yet that global warming is already making El Niño stronger.

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题目 Questions

Questions 1-5: Which paragraph mentions the following?

1. corals using strontium when waters are cooler

2. drought and wildfires in Indonesia

3. the Galápagos being in the heart of El Niño's strongest impacts

4. temperature swings intensifying by 36 percent

5. trade winds blowing from east to west

Questions 6-9: T/F/NG

6. This year's El Niño is predicted to reach three degrees above normal.

7. Climate models have always agreed that El Niño will get stronger.

8. Corals grow their skeletons using only calcium.

9. The new study used corals from the Galápagos Islands.

Questions 10-13: Complete the notes. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.

• El Niño is part of the larger cycle called the El Niño–Southern (10) ____________.
• In a strong El Niño year, waters can reach more than (11) ____________ degrees C above normal.
• Corals' growth bands are akin to (12) ____________.
• Temperature swings in Galápagos corals have intensified by (13) ____________ percent.

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答案 Answers

题号	答案
1	E
2	D
3	B
4	F
5	C
6	TRUE
7	FALSE (mixed signals)
8	FALSE (can substitute strontium)
9	TRUE
10	Oscillation
11	two
12	tree rings
13	36

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核心词汇

El Niño / climate change / coral / Galápagos / Pacific Ocean / trade winds / ENSO / temperature / fossil / isotope / strontium / drought / wildfire