2. 外语
  3. El Nino is the term used for the period when sea surface temperatures are above normal off the South American coast along the eq

El Nino is the term used for the period when sea surface temperatures are above normal off the South American coast along the eq

admin2010-08-07  68
问题       El Nino is the term used for the period when sea surface temperatures are above normal off the South American coast along the equatorial Pacific, sometimes called the Earth’s heartbeat, and is a dramatic but mysterious climate system that periodically rages across the Pacific.
     El Nino means "the little boy" or "the Christ child" in Spanish, and is so called because its warm current is felt along coastal Peru and Ecuador around Christmas. But the local warming is just part of an intricate set of changes in the ocean and atmosphere across the tropical Pacific, which covers a third of the Earth’s circumference. Its intensity is such that it affects temperatures, storm tracks and rainfall around the world.
     Droughts in Africa and Australia tropical storms in the Pacific, torrential rains along the Californian coast and the Peruvian deserts have all been ascribed to the whim of El Nino.
     This at least is the theory, and it has worked pretty well over the past century, with El Nino occurring about every three to five years and La Nina in between. But there have been some baffling developments in recent years. For one thing, El Nino has returned three times in the past four years. For another, since 1976 El Nino has dominated relative to the cooler phase (La Nina). There has been only one significant La Nina, but five El Ninos, including an extremely severe one in 1982—1983 that caused damage costing 8 billion dollars. Moreover a huge pool of warm water has settled down near the dateline in the central Pacific.
     Yet it is important to understand the changes if scientists are to be able to forecast the climatic effects of El Ninos with any degree of accuracy. This is not just an academic task— accurate forecasts can spell out feast or famine in many tropical countries around the world. Forecasting efforts have focused on El Nino, whose effects are generally more severe than those of La Nina.
     A worrying possibility is that the changes maybe due to greenhouse warming. If so, the recent fluctuations may be an early glimpse of worse things to come.  
What’s the best title for this passage?
选项 A、El Nino
B、How Does El Nino Happen
C、What Is El Nino
D、The Effects of El Nino
答案A
解析 确定标题题。文章通篇讲的都是厄尔尼诺这种气候现象，而B“如何发生”，C“什么是厄尔尼诺”，D“厄尔尼诺的影响”，都是文章介绍的一部分，不能涵盖整篇文章。故应选A。
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.kaotiyun.com/show/L9xd777K
本试题收录于： 公共英语四级笔试题库公共英语（PETS）分类
0

公共英语四级笔试

公共英语（PETS）

相关试题推荐
随机试题
最新回复(0)