双语时事系列21：雨带也“北漂”

2009-10-15 00:00:00来源：网络

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双语时事：雨带也“北漂”

An article in Nature Geoscience predicts that the rainiest area on Earth, the intertropical convergence zone, is moving steadily north.

发表在《自然：地球科学》（Nature Geoscience）杂志上的一篇文章预测，地球上降雨最多的区域——热带辐合带——正逐步北移。

Rain Zone Moving North

If you've spoken to anyone in New York City—where Scientific American’s offices are—then you’ve heard about the rain, every day since mid-June.

Still, we're not in the intertropical convergence zone, an area just north of the equator stretching across the Pacific that builds rain clouds 30,000 feet thick releasing as much as 13 feet of rain annually.

But the rainiest place on Earth might reach us, eventually. Researchers report in the journal Nature Geoscience the zone is moving north at a rate of nearly a mile per year.

It's important because it supplies freshwater to a billion people in the tropics.

Researchers studied Washington Island in the Pacific that gets 10 feet of rain annually. Core samples revealed that it was desert-like only 400 years ago. A similar situation was found in Palau, now in the heart of the convergence zone. Also, the now arid Galapagos Islands had a very wet climate about 400 years ago.

Researchers predict that this zone will be more than 75 miles north of its current position as early as midcentury, having profound economic and cultural implications for those who currently depend upon it.

雨带也“北漂”

如果你和纽约市（《科学美国人》杂志的办公室就位于纽约市）的任何一个人交谈过——那么你就会听到人们谈到绵绵不断的雨，自从6月中旬以来，雨每天都下个不停。

不过，我们并没有处在热带辐合带。热带辐合带恰好处于赤道以北，延伸过太平洋。热带辐合带的雨层能累计到3万英尺厚，每年带来的雨量高达13英尺。

不过，地球上雨量最大的地区最终可能达到我们这儿。研究者们在《自然：地球科学》（Nature Geoscience）杂志上报到说，热带辐合带正在以每年近1英里的速度向北移动。

这很重要，因为热带辐合带向热带地区的10亿人提供淡水。研究者们研究过太平洋上的华盛顿岛（Washington Island），该岛每年的降雨量有10英尺。岩心样品显示，在400年前，该岛像沙漠一样干旱。类似的情况在帕劳（Palau,译者注：位于西太平洋上的一个岛国）也发现了，帕劳目前处于热带辐合带的中心部位。另外，目前干旱的加拉帕戈斯群岛（Galapagos Islands）在400年以前的气候非常湿润。

研究者们预测，到本世纪中叶，热带辐合带将要比目前的位置往北移动超过75英里，对于目前那些依赖于热带辐合带的人来说，这样的移动会产生巨大的经济和文化影响。

Vocabulary:

Convergence: 会和；相交

Equator: 赤道

Stretch: 延伸

Annually: 每年地

Billion: 十亿

Reveal: 揭示

Arid: 干旱的

Climate: 气候

Profound: 巨大的；深远的

Implication: 影响