雅思阅读 135: The Tides Already Rising（不可逆转的涨潮——太平洋岛屿的未来）

改编自 NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory（2024年9月）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://www.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/nasa-analysis-shows-irreversible-sea-level-rise-for-pacific-islands/

Reading Passage

A. Ask a climate modeller what can still be prevented, and the answer is often a cautious list. Ask the same modeller what is already baked into the system, and the list becomes shorter but bleaker. According to an analysis by NASA's sea-level change science team, low-lying Pacific nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati and Fiji will absorb at least fifteen centimetres of sea-level rise over the next three decades — and, crucially, this amount of rise will arrive regardless of what the world does about emissions in the years ahead. The projection was produced at the request of the island nations themselves, working alongside the United States State Department. It is not a worst-case fantasy; it is the floor beneath which the water will not, on present understanding, fall. For communities whose entire landmass barely clears the high-tide mark, fifteen centimetres is not an abstract figure. It is the difference between a road that dries out at noon and one that does not. The team, led by Ben Hamlington of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, emphasised that this near-term rise is already committed: it reflects heat already absorbed by the oceans and ice already melting, and no future emissions decision can put that water back.

B. What fifteen centimetres means on the ground is illustrated most vividly by the maps that accompanied the analysis. Released in late September 2024, the maps show, at high resolution, where nuisance flooding — the kind that arrives with an ordinary high tide, not a storm — is likely to break out by the 2050s. The team, led by researchers at the University of Hawaii with partners in Colorado and Virginia Tech, began with five nations: Kiribati, Tuvalu, Fiji, Nauru and Niue. The numbers are striking. Parts of Tuvalu that now see fewer than five flood days in an average year could be flooding on roughly twenty-five days annually within a generation. Regions of Kiribati that today barely register a handful will reach around sixty-five. The increase, in other words, is not linear but order-of-magnitude: the nuisance becomes the norm. Salt water will not only wash over the land from the outside; it will also push the water table upward, so that in places it simply bubbles up through the soil beneath people's feet. The maps themselves cover a range of emissions futures, from best case to business as usual to worst case, and are now available to officials across the region through a public online portal.

C. The scientists are at pains to point out that sea level does not rise uniformly around the planet. A coastline's shape, the way glacial meltwater sloshes through the ocean basins, even how the ground itself is rebounding after the weight of ancient ice — all modulate the local figure. In most regions this means the numbers vary noticeably from one neighbourhood to the next. In the tropical Pacific, the researchers were struck by how consistent the projections turned out to be across nations, even as the impacts diverged. The same fifteen centimetres might mean, for one country, that its airport floods several times a year, and for another, that whole neighbourhoods are inundated for nearly half the year. Location, in other words, decides whether a given centimetre is an inconvenience or an eviction notice. The same rise that is merely a nuisance in a steeper, rocky coastline can be catastrophic on a flat atoll, where the land's highest point may be only a few metres above the sea.

D. A further difficulty is one of measurement. To refine projections, researchers want to combine satellite observations of ocean height with tide-gauge readings taken at the coast and with accurate surveys of how high the land itself is. Each of these is imperfect on its own; together they are powerful. The problem, as the NASA team puts it bluntly, is that there is a real shortage of on-the-ground data in precisely the nations most exposed. Tide gauges are sparse, and precise land-elevation surveys, which distinguish a metre from a metre and a half at the coast, are expensive to collect. The consequence is that projections for the very places most in need of fine detail are the ones least able to supply it. The maps released in 2024 are, in this sense, a beginning rather than an answer, intended to help officials decide where to focus protection and early-warning systems while better data are gathered. Ground surveys on these remote atolls are slow and expensive, and satellite measurements of land height, however good, cannot yet resolve the difference between a metre and a metre and a half everywhere.

E. Behind the technical language lies a political claim. Pacific islanders themselves frame the situation not merely as an environmental problem but as one of justice and survival. A youth leader from Tuvalu, involved in a United Nations-backed effort to preserve her country's statehood even if its land disappears, describes the rising water as something she lives every day: everyone on the small atolls lives by the shore, and everyone is exposed. Sea level, the scientists note, will continue to climb for centuries, long beyond any single policy cycle. The 2024 maps are therefore less a forecast to be debated than a warning to be prepared against. The next three decades are fixed; the centuries after them are not. Whether that remaining flexibility translates into adaptation, retreat, or abandonment will be decided less by satellites than by the willingness of the nations that produced the emissions to stand beside those that did not. The Rising Nations initiative, which the youth leader helps lead, explicitly asks the international community to recognise that the disappearance of a country's land would not mean the disappearance of its nationhood.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. What the high-resolution flood maps actually predict ii. The geology of ancient ice sheets iii. Why sea level rise is not the same everywhere iv. How satellites measure ocean colour v. The shortage of local ground-level measurements vi. A call for justice and long-term preparedness vii. Why Tuvalu has no airport

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. What is special about the fifteen-centimetre projection? A. It will happen only if emissions keep rising. B. It is unavoidable regardless of future emissions choices. C. It is a worst-case scenario only. D. It applies only to the United States.

6. By the 2050s, some parts of Kiribati may experience how many flood days a year? A. Fewer than five. B. Around twenty-five. C. Roughly sixty-five. D. More than two hundred.

7. Why does the same sea-level rise affect nations differently? A. Because each country uses different measuring instruments. B. Because local topography, geography and impacts vary from place to place. C. Because Pacific islands refuse to share data. D. Because some countries are larger than others.

8. What problem limits the accuracy of projections? A. Satellites have stopped working. B. There is a real lack of on-the-ground coastal data in these nations. C. Pacific islanders refuse to participate. D. Sea level is too deep to measure.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Tuvalu, Kiribati and Fiji will experience at least fifteen centimetres of sea level rise in the next thirty years.
10. By the 2050s, flood days in parts of Tuvalu may rise to around twenty-five annually.
11. Sea level rises at exactly the same rate in every region of the world.
12. The flood maps were produced without consulting any Pacific island nation.
13. Tuvalu has already begun evacuating its entire population to New Zealand.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

Flooding on low-lying islands can occur when saltwater pushes the (14) __________ upward, causing seawater to bubble up through the (15) __________ beneath settlements.

答案与解析

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