雅思阅读 175: The Silent Toll of the Summer Heat（盛夏酷暑的无声代价）

改编自 London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine / Lancet Countdown（2025年）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2025/climate-change-driven-summer-heat-caused-16500-additional-deaths-across-europe

Reading Passage

A. Heat is the weather-related killer that announces itself least. A hurricane arrives on the evening news, a flood leaves visible water marks, an earthquake topples buildings. A heatwave, by contrast, arrives gradually and kills quietly, and many of its victims die alone in upstairs rooms, their deaths recorded as heart attacks or respiratory failures on death certificates that never mention the temperature outside. For decades this invisibility made heat hard to count. Only in the last twenty years have epidemiologists built the statistical methods needed to estimate "excess mortality" — the number of deaths above what a normal summer would have produced — and only recently have those methods been applied city by city across whole continents. The results, published repeatedly in the middle of the 2020s, have been uncomfortable. Heat is not a nuisance; it is one of the most immediate and measurable health consequences of a warming climate, and its death toll is rising faster than almost anyone predicted a generation ago. Unlike a pandemic, which announces itself in case numbers, a heatwave accumulates casualties slowly enough that they are only visible when statisticians, months later, compare how many people died with how many would have died in an ordinary summer.

B. The global figures are now large enough to demand attention. The annual Lancet Countdown on climate and health estimates that, over the most recent decade, an average of 546,000 people died each year from causes attributable to exposure to high temperatures. That figure represents a rise of roughly 63 percent on the 1990-1999 average, and the rate of heat-related mortality has climbed about 23 percent since the 1990s. The numbers look even starker when a single season is examined. A rapid analysis by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London, published in September 2025, concluded that the summer just past had caused an estimated 24,400 heat-related deaths across 854 European cities, of which roughly 16,500 — about 68 percent — could be attributed to human-driven climate change rather than natural variability. In other words, of every three people who died in that European heat, two would not have died that summer in a world without the warming produced by fossil-fuel emissions.

C. The mechanism by which heat kills is often misunderstood by people who have never experienced extreme temperatures. It is not simply that a healthy body overheats and stops working. Heat illness develops along a gradient: at first the body sweats and diverts blood to the skin to cool itself, straining the heart; over long hours, electrolytes are lost, kidneys work to concentrate failing urine, and the nervous system slows. Older people are particularly vulnerable because their ability to sense and respond to heat declines with age; many do not feel thirsty, do not realise their bedrooms are dangerously hot, and cannot adjust fan or window without assistance. A 2025 analysis in England and Wales predicted that a single four-day heatwave in June would cause more than 500 excess deaths, of whom roughly two-thirds would be aged 75 or over. Obesity, chronic disease and poverty compound the risk, because air-conditioning is expensive and poorly insulated housing stores heat overnight, robbing residents of the cooler hours that once offered relief.

D. Not all regions suffer equally. India, with its vast population and a climate that already pushes toward the edge of survivability, provides a warning of what lies ahead. A 2026 district-level analysis estimated that a single day of extreme heat across the country causes roughly 3,400 excess deaths, and a sustained five-day heatwave close to 30,000. These figures are national averages; they conceal enormous variation between coastal cities, where humid heat slows the evaporation of sweat, and inland plains, where dry heat can reach temperatures at which even healthy people cannot work outdoors after midday. India's response has been among the world's most advanced — early-warning systems, rooftop garden programmes, public cooling centres — but it remains a race against a baseline temperature that keeps rising. China's 2025 Lancet Countdown report told a similar story at home: heatwave-related mortality had risen 170 percent above the 1986-2005 baseline, outdoor physical activity had fallen by 85 percent, and even sleep was being disrupted, with deep sleep loss up more than 20 percent. The poorest urban neighbourhoods, where concrete surfaces absorb heat and roof insulation is thinnest, suffer the largest excess deaths, even though they contribute least to the emissions that warm the climate.

E. The economic consequences follow the medical ones. The Lancet's 2025 report noted that in 2024, high temperatures cost the global economy an estimated 21 billion potential labour hours, as outdoor work became unsafe. Construction, agriculture and delivery work — the occupations least likely to be automated and most likely to employ people who cannot afford air-conditioning — bear the brunt. Yet heat also remains one of the most preventable environmental killers. Simple measures — opening cooling centres, checking on elderly neighbours, adjusting work schedules to the cooler hours, planting street trees that shade asphalt — reduce mortality substantially at a fraction of the cost of hospital admission. The technology to save lives already exists. What is missing is the political habit of treating a heatwave as the emergency it is, rather than as an occasion for advice to drink water. The 16,500 deaths in the summer of 2025 were not a natural disaster in the way that an earthquake is. They were, in large part, a choice — the accumulated result of decades in which warnings were issued and preparations delayed. Each new summer will add another such toll until the societies that once studied it decide, collectively, that heat deserves the emergency infrastructure — the early warnings, the cool centres, the shaded streets — that other weather hazards have long received.

Questions 1-4

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

List of Headings i. Why heat kills quietly and invisibly ii. The rising global and European death toll iii. How the body fails under heat and who suffers most iv. Regional variation — India, China and unequal exposure v. The economic cost and the case for prevention vi. The history of air-conditioning technology vii. Why earthquakes are deadlier than heatwaves

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. According to the Lancet Countdown, what is the estimated annual number of heat-related deaths in recent years? A. About 24,400. B. About 546,000. C. About 3,400. D. About 16,500.

6. In the 2025 European analysis, what proportion of heat-related deaths was attributed to human-driven climate change? A. About 23 percent. B. About 68 percent. C. About 170 percent. D. About 20 percent.

7. Why are older people especially vulnerable to heat? A. They have stronger sweat glands. B. Their ability to sense and respond to heat declines with age. C. They always live in well-insulated flats. D. They spend more time outdoors.

8. What does the author argue about heat prevention? A. It requires expensive new technology that does not yet exist. B. Simple measures can reduce deaths substantially at relatively low cost. C. It is impossible once temperatures exceed 30 degrees. D. It depends mainly on better hospital intensive care.

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. Heat-related deaths are often recorded on death certificates without mentioning temperature.
10. The 2025 European study found that most of the 24,400 heat deaths were attributable to natural climate variability.
11. In England and Wales, about two-thirds of excess deaths during a four-day June heatwave were predicted to be aged 75 or over.
12. India has been slower than most countries to develop heat early-warning systems.
13. Heatwaves are now responsible for more deaths each year than road traffic accidents.

Questions 14-15

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

Heat-related mortality has risen sharply: a single day of extreme heat in India is estimated to cause around 3,400 excess deaths, while a five-day heatwave causes nearly 30,000. In 2024, high temperatures cost an estimated 21 billion potential (14) __________ hours, with outdoor occupations such as construction and agriculture bearing the (15) __________.

答案与解析

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