In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide acts rather like a one-way mirror -- the glass in the roof of a greenhouse which allows the sun’s rays to enter but prevents the heat from escaping.
According to a weather expert’s prediction, the atmosphere will be 3~C warmer in the year 2050 than it is today, if man continues to burn fuels at the present rate. If this warming up took place, the ice caps in the poles would begin to melt, thus raising sea level several metres and severely flooding coastal cities. Also, the increase in atmospheric temperature would lead to great changes in the climate of the northern hemisphere, possibly resulting in an alteration of the earth’s chief food-growing zones.
In the past, concern about a man-made warming of the earth has concentrated on the Arctic because the Antarctic is much colder and has a much thicker ice sheet. But the weather experts are now paying more attention to West Antarctic, which may be affected by only
A. the greenhouse effect
B. the solar effects on the earth
C. the models of solar-weather interactions
D. the causes affecting weather
Passage 2
The molecules of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere affect the heat balance of the Earth by acting as a one-way screen. Although these molecules allow radiation at visible wavelengths, where most of the energy of sunlight is concentrated, to pass through, they absorb some longer wave- length, infrared emissions radiated from the Earth’s surface, radiation that would otherwise be transmitted back into space. For the Earth to maintain a constant average temperature, such emissions from the planet must balance incoming solar radiation. If there were no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, heat would escape from the Earth much more easily. The surface temperature would be so much lower that the oceans might be a solid mass of ice.
Today, however, the potential problem is too much carbon dioxide. The burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by about 15 percent in the last hundred years
A. Fossil fuels were burned for the first time.
B. The average temperature at the Earth's surface has become 2℃ cooler.
C. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased measurably.
D. The amount of farmland worldwide has double
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