VOA常速英语2007-Arctic Ice Survey Announced
时间：2019-01-03 作者：英语课 分类：2007年VOA常速英语（十月）
Washington
31 October 2007
A team of British explorers has announced they are going to the North Pole to measure the ice cap's thickness. The expedition, a collaboration 1 of Cambridge University in Britain and a U.S. Navy oceanography school, will take ground-based readings of an ice formation most scientists agree is shrinking at an alarming rate. VOA's Paul Sisco has more.
Explorer Pen Hadow's three-member team will pull a sled-mounted radar 2 device 2,000 kilometers across the Arctic. The device measures ice density 3 every eight centimeters, and will produce millions of readings.
They leave in February and will face temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius 4 on the journey that will take up to 120 days. They have been testing their gear in Britain and Canada.
Hadow is excited about the prospects 5, "For the first time we will be able to transmit video images -- webcam footage of the expedition -- as it unfolds so people can track us, and the whole idea is to engage as many people as we can in what we're doing."
New fallen snow on top of the ice makes ground-based measurements more accurate than satellite data.
It has been in the planning stage for a while, said Hadow. "Well, we spent the last two years developing impulse radar, which normally is about 100 kilograms and suspended under an aircraft and so on. We've managed to get it down to about four kilograms in weight. It's the size of a briefcase 6 and we are literally 7 dragging it behind the sled as we go."
Explorer Ann Daniels, who is a member of the expedition, says, "We will have to cover between 15 to 20 kilometers a day, and it will be my job to navigate 8 us through the myriad 9 of pressure ridges 10, open water, thin ice, and actually find a path of least resistance through this really, really difficult terrain 11."
The ice cap shrank enough in 2007 that a pathway through the cap known as the Northwest Passage opened up during the melting of the Arctic summer.
Cambridge University's Joao Rodrigues explains. "Thickness of the ice cap will determine how much solar radiation will be reflected, and it will determine also the heat exchanges between the ocean and the atmosphere and it is thus a vital component 12 of climate models."
If warming trends continue, some experts predict the Arctic Ocean could be ice free during the summer within a few decades.
- The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
- He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。
- They are following the flight of an aircraft by radar.他们正在用雷达追踪一架飞机的飞行。
- Enemy ships were detected on the radar.敌舰的影像已显现在雷达上。
- The population density of that country is 685 per square mile.那个国家的人口密度为每平方英里685人。
- The region has a very high population density.该地区的人口密度很高。
- The temperature tonight will fall to seven degrees Celsius.今晚气温将下降到七摄氏度。
- The maximum temperature in July may be 36 degrees Celsius.七月份最高温度可能达到36摄氏度。
- There is a mood of pessimism in the company about future job prospects. 公司中有一种对工作前景悲观的情绪。
- They are less sanguine about the company's long-term prospects. 他们对公司的远景不那么乐观。
- He packed a briefcase with what might be required.他把所有可能需要的东西都装进公文包。
- He requested the old man to look after the briefcase.他请求那位老人照看这个公事包。
- He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
- Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。
- He was the first man to navigate the Atlantic by air.他是第一个飞越大西洋的人。
- Such boats can navigate on the Nile.这种船可以在尼罗河上航行。
- They offered no solution for all our myriad problems.对于我们数不清的问题他们束手无策。
- I had three weeks to make a myriad of arrangements.我花了三个星期做大量准备工作。
- The path winds along mountain ridges. 峰回路转。
- Perhaps that was the deepest truth in Ridges's nature. 在里奇斯的思想上，这大概可以算是天经地义第一条了。
- He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
- He knows the terrain of this locality like the back of his hand.他对这一带的地形了如指掌。