Extreme weather

极端天气

Greenhouse-gas emissions are increasing the frequency of heatwaves

温室气体的排放增加了热浪出现的频率

And it will get worse in future

而且将来会变得更糟

Jul 25th 2019

EXTREME HEAT is ruinous to productivity, particularly if you are a criminal. Several American police forces posted messages to their social-media accounts last weekend declaring a moratorium on crime. “It is just too hot to be outside committing crimes,” wrote the Park Forest Police Department in Illinois, on its Facebook page. In some cases, it seems to have worked. “We have had zero customers stay the night at our ‘hotel’, so we appreciate all of the criminals adhering to the heat advisory,” tweeted the Malden Police in Massachusetts on Sunday.

酷热对工作效率是毁灭性的，尤其是如果你是个罪犯。上周末，几名美国警察在他们的社交媒体账户上发布消息，宣布暂停犯罪活动。“天气炎热，不适宜外出犯罪。”伊利诺伊州公园森林警察局在其Facebook页面上写道。在某些情况下，它似乎起了作用。马萨诸塞州马尔登警方周日在推特上写道:“我们的‘酒店’没有客人入住，所以我们感谢所有遵守高温警告的罪犯。”

词汇

Moratorium/暂停，中止

Adherie/坚持；依附；粘着

 

The messages came as scorching temperatures swept across America, placing more than 100m people under excessive-heat warnings. Temperatures hovered either side of 40°C on the east coast. On July 18th Mitch Petrus, a well-known retired player of American football, died of heatstroke after working outdoors all day. At least five other deaths have been reported.

这些信息发布之际，美国各地正经历着酷暑天气，超过1亿人处于高温警告之下。东海岸的气温徘徊在40°C左右。7月18日，著名的美式足球退役球员米奇·佩特鲁斯在户外工作了一整天后中暑身亡。此外至少5人被报道死亡。

词汇

Scorching/灼热的；激烈的

Hover/盘旋，翱翔；徘徊

Heatstroke/中暑

 

Europeans have also been sweating, for the second time this summer. A month ago, warm air from the Sahara contributed to making it the continent’s hottest June on record. At the top of Mont Blanc, western Europe’s highest mountain, instruments recorded 7°C (the normal June temperature would be below freezing). At Gallargues-le-Montueux near Nîmes, in France, temperatures peaked at 45.9°C. The previous record anywhere in that country was 1.8°C lower. Linked to these temperatures, in Alaska and Portugal, forest fires are raging.

欧洲人今年夏天第二次流汗。一个月前，撒哈拉沙漠的暖空气使其成为欧洲有记录以来最热的六月。在西欧最高峰勃朗峰(Mont Blanc)的山顶，仪器记录的温度为7°C(6月的正常温度将低于冰点)。在法国尼姆附近的Gallargues-le-Montueux，最高气温为45.9°C。该国此前的各处的气温记录比这要低1.8°。受高温影响，在阿拉斯加和葡萄牙，森林大火正在肆虐。

 

If your hunch is that this kind of extreme weather is more common today than it was once-upon-a-time, you are correct. When, in 2003, tens of thousands of people in Europe died prematurely as a result of a two-week heatwave, it was deemed to be a once-in-1,000-years event. Twelve years later, a study led by Nikolaos Christidis of the Hadley Centre, the climate-research division of Britain’s Met Office, found that heatwaves of this severity had become once-in-100-years events, and would be commonplace by the 2040s.

如果你的直觉是这种极端天气在今天比以前更常见，那么你是对的。2003年，一场持续两周的热浪夺去了欧洲数万人的生命，这被认为是一件千年一遇的大事。12年后，英国气象局气候研究部门哈德利中心(Hadley Centre)的尼古拉•克里斯蒂迪斯(Nikolaos Christidis)领导的一项研究发现，如此严重的热浪已成为百年一遇的事件，而到本世纪40年代这将司空见惯。

词汇

Hunch/预感；直觉

 

The question on many people’s minds is whether these changes, and specific events like this week’s temperatures in America and Europe, are caused by greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. For years, the semi-official line was that no single weather event could be blamed on climate change, only trends. That began to change in 2004, with the publication of the first “attribution” study. This focused on the European heatwave of 2003, when average summer temperatures broke through a threshold until then unbreached in 150 years of records. By comparing simulations of a world with and without greenhouse-gas emissions, Peter Stott at the Met Office and his colleagues found that climate change had made the record-breaking heatwave at least twice as likely as it would otherwise have been.

许多人心中的问题是，这些变化，以及本周美国和欧洲的气温等具体事件，是否由大气中温室气体的累积造成。多年来，半官方的说法是，没有任何单一的天气事件可以归咎于气候变化，而只能归咎于趋势。2004年，随着第一个“归因”研究的发表，这种情况开始改变。这主要集中在2003年的欧洲热浪上，当时的夏季平均气温突破了一个阈值，直到那时才打破了150年来的记录。英国气象局的彼得·斯托特和他的同事们通过对一个有温室气体排放和没有温室气体排放的仿真世界进行比较，发现气候变化导致破纪录的热浪发生的可能性至少是正常情况下的两倍。

词汇

Threshold/门槛；开始；极限

 

Since then, research of this sort, intended to study how climate change is already promoting extreme weather, has grown rapidly. A recent, extended drought in California has been linked to greenhouse-gas emissions, as was the extreme heat southern Europe experienced during the summer of 2017. That event was made at least ten times more likely by climate change according to work published later that year by World Weather Attribution, a collaboration between experts in these sorts of analyses.

从那时起，这类旨在研究气候变化如何促进极端天气的研究迅速发展。最近加州持续的干旱与温室气体排放有关，2017年夏天南欧经历的极度高温也是如此。根据一部有关科研专家对此类气候研究的杂志《世界天气归因》在那年晚些时候发表的一项研究，气候变化至少使那次事件发生的可能性增加了十倍。

 

Shortening odds

缩短发生概率【odds这边不但有概率（尤指事件发生），还有古怪的的含义】

 

Attribution work does not concern itself only with heat. Floods, storms and cold spells also carry a climatic fingerprint. When Hurricane Harvey hit America in August 2017, it stalled over Texas, delivering huge quantities of rain, which caused heavy flooding and more than 80 deaths. On that occasion, World Weather Attribution found that climate change was responsible for intensifying precipitation levels by between 8% and 19%. Since 2012, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has published an annual compendium of attribution studies. Roughly 70% of events scrutinised show some influence from climate change.

归因工作本身并不仅仅与热有关。洪水、风暴和寒潮也带有气候特征。2017年8月，飓风“哈维”袭击美国时，在德克萨斯州上空停了下来，带来了大量降雨，导致严重洪灾，80多人死亡。当时，《世界天气归因》发现，气候变化导致降水水平增加了8%至19%。自2012年以来，《美国气象学会公报》每年都会发布一份归因研究概要。大约70%的调查事件显示了气候变化的影响。

词汇

Compendium/纲要；概略

Scrutinize/作仔细检查；细致观察

 

One challenge has been to do the analyses faster. Findings connected with the heatwave of 2003 took a year to appear, by which time public interest had mostly moved on. The goal today is to offer a verdict on the influence of climate change on particular meteorological events more or less as they are happening. Here, the Met Office has been leading the way, with its Dutch, French and German counterparts close behind. But many other places do not have the capacity to carry out the onerous computer-modelling required. As a result, a European Union project planned to start before November will seek to provide contemporaneous weather-attribution analyses for the continent.

其中一个挑战是更快地进行分析。科研人员花了一年的时间才发现与2003年那场热浪相关因素，到那时公众的兴趣大多已经转移了。今天的目标是就气候变化对正在发生的特定气象事件的影响或多或少给出一个结论。在这方面，英国气象局一直处于领先地位，荷兰、法国和德国的气象局紧随其后。但是，许多其他地方没有能力进行所需的繁重的计算机建模工作。因此，计划在11月之前启动的一个欧盟项目将寻求为欧洲大陆提供同期天气归因分析。

词汇

Verdict/结论；裁定

Onerous/  繁重的；麻烦的

Contemporaneous/同时期的；同时代的，同时发生的

 

An inadvertent early test of how this could work took place last month, when many of Europe’s attribution scientists gathered at a statistical-climatology meeting in Toulouse, just as the June heatwave hit. Within days they published their conclusions. Accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had made the event at least five times more likely than would otherwise have been the case.

上个月，就在6月的热浪来袭之际，许多欧洲科学家在图卢兹参加了一个统计气候学会议。几天后，他们发表了他们的结论。大气中累积的温室气体使得这一事件发生的可能性至少是其他情况下的五倍。

 

Such statements help show that the danger posed by climate change is clear and present, not just something for future generations to worry about. Heatwaves, for example, sometimes kill by the thousand—and can cause more casualties than other meteorological extremes, such as floods and hurricanes. But attribution also provides useful guidance to policymakers.

这样的声明有助于表明，气候变化带来的危险是明确而现实的，而不只是未来几代人需要担心的问题。例如，热浪有时会造成上千人死亡，而且造成的伤亡比其他气象极端情况(如洪水和飓风)还要多。但归因也为决策者提供了有用的指导。

词汇

Casualty/伤亡；人员伤亡

 

For instance, information about how much more likely an event is today than it was 50 or 100 years ago can assist decisions about building and adapting infrastructure. If what were thought of as once-in-a-millennium heatwaves now come once a century and will soon become so frequent as to be normal, then public-health systems need to be designed to cope with an influx of people suffering from heat stress. Likewise, if big floods are more frequent, water-handling systems need to be expanded and flood defences raised. Insurance and reinsurance companies are paying particular attention, because these calculations help them reassess risk levels.

例如，与50年或100年前相比，关于当前事件发生的可能性有多大的信息，可以帮助做出关于构建和改建基础设施的决策。如果曾经被认为是千年一遇的热浪现在出现在一个世纪一次，而且很快就会变得如此频繁以至于变得正常，那么公共卫生系统需要被设计来应对遭受热浪而大量人群的涌入情况。同样，如果大洪水更加频繁，就需要扩大水处理系统，提高防洪能力。保险公司和再保险公司对此特别关注，因为这些计算有助于它们重新评估风险水平。

词汇

millennium/千年期`

influx/流入；汇集

 

Conversely, some people blamed climate change for a drought in south-eastern Brazil in 2014 and 2015, in which water levels in reservoirs around São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro fell to between 3% and 5% of capacity. But a study published in 2015 by Friederike Otto of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University found no sign that greenhouse-gas emissions had raised the risk of drought. Dr Otto concluded instead that a quadrupling of São Paulo’s population since 1960 had put pressure on scarce water supplies.

相反，一些人将2014年和2015年巴西东南部的干旱归咎于气候变化，在那场干旱中，圣保罗和里约热内卢周围水库的水位降至产能的3%至5%。但牛津大学环境变化研究所的弗里德里克·奥托(Friederike Otto)在2015年发表的一项研究发现，没有迹象表明温室气体排放增加了干旱的风险。奥托博士的结论是，自1960年以来，圣保罗人口增加了四倍，这对稀缺的水资源供应造成了压力。

 

 

Attribution science is also playing a role in courtrooms and human-rights hearings. A study published in 2015 showed that climate change contributed to the high wind speeds of supertyphoon Haiyan, which blew through the Philippines in 2013, killing more than 6,000 people. Those stronger winds created a much bigger storm surge. The matter was raised during hearings held by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights last year, which sought to explore the question of whether fossil-fuel companies could be held responsible.

归因科学也在法庭和人权听证会上发挥作用。2015年发表的一项研究显示，气候变化是超级台风“海燕”(Haiyan)风速飞快的原因之一。2013年，台风“海燕”横扫菲律宾，造成6000多人死亡。这些强风造成了更大的风暴潮。菲律宾人权委员会(Philippine Commission on Human Rights)去年举行的听证会上提出了这个问题。听证会的目的是探讨化石燃料公司是否应该对此负责。

 

Clear, present and lethal?

明确，现实和致命?

 

Others have sought to pin companies down more specifically. In one widely reported lawsuit, Saúl Luciano Lliuya, a Peruvian farmer, is suing RWE, a German energy firm, for contributing to the melting of a mountain glacier that threatens to sweep away his village. Mr Luciano Lliuya’s counsel, Roda Verheyen, has said that the case “was mostly made possible by the advancement of...attribution science”. Lindene Patton, a lawyer with the Earth and Water Law Group, a firm specialising in environmental law, has written that “the science of event attribution may become a driver of litigation, as it shifts understanding of what weather is expected and, relevantly for law, foreseeable.”

其他人则试图更具体地限制公司。在一场被广泛报道的诉讼中，秘鲁农民索尔·卢西亚诺·柳亚(Saul Luciano Lliuya)起诉德国能源公司莱茵集团(RWE)，原因是后者导致一座高山冰川融化，威胁到他所在的村庄。卢西亚诺•柳亚的律师罗达•弗海因(Roda Verheyen)表示，此案“主要是由于……归因科学的进步”。专门研究环境法的地球与水法律集团的律师Lindene Patton写道，“事件归因的科学可能会成为诉讼的推动力，因为它改变了人们对天气的预期，以及与法律相关的可预见的理解。”

词汇

Litigation/诉讼；起诉

To a layman, however good attribution science has become, trying to use it to link an event in the Peruvian Andes to a particular firm in Germany looks a bit of a stretch. But whether or not Mr Luciano Lliuya wins his case, the fact it is even being heard is a straw in the wind—and a sign that global warming can change metaphorical weather patterns as well as real ones.

对于一个门外汉来说，无论归因科学已经变得多么完美，试图用它来把秘鲁安第斯山脉的一个事件与德国的一家特定公司联系起来，看起来有点牵强。但是，无论卢西亚诺•柳亚先生是否赢得了这场官司，人们听到这一说法都是一种预兆——这一迹象表明，全球变暖不仅能改变真实的气候模式，还能改变隐喻性的气候模式。

词汇

Metaphorical/比喻性的，隐喻性的