雅思阅读第097套P3-The Year Without a Summer
Reading Passage 3
You should spend about 20minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage three.
The Year Without a Summer
1816 was a strange year indeed.In America, in midsummer, a 'dry log’ covered the land so thickly that snowfell, and large parts of the country were gripped by an intense and lingeringcold front. The situation was no better in Great Britain and Europe, where cooltemperatures and wet weather persisted for months. Mary Shelley, author ofFrankenstein, while holidaying in Switzerland, complained of 'incessantrainfall’, a feeling which may have put her in the mood for writing her mostfamous work. But there were to be far more significant effects of what becomeknown as the 'year without a summer".
But where did the summer go?The main culprit, surprisingly, was a volcano on the other side of the planet:Mount Tamhora. in Indonesia, whose eruption of the year before was of suchcolossal magnitude that it altered global climate. In the years leading tothis, the mountain had experienced minor eruptions, but the 18.15 event was theculmination — a huge explosive outburst of the central volcanic vent withsubsequent caldera collapse. Over 70,000 people in the vicinity were killed fromlava flows, tsunamis, and pumice and ash falls. But more significantly, theeruption — now acknowledged as the largest in recorded history —ejected hugeamounts of dust into the stratosphere. This atmospheric layer is the highestand most static, and least affected by rainfall, which means that it takesrelatively long periods for volcanic dust to be washed out. If these dustparticles are of fine composition, they are quickly blown around the globe, toremain there for years.
On a somewhat benign note, thisair-borne ash resulted in beautiful pastel-coloured sunsets and extendedtwilights in Northern Europe. However, on a (quite literally) darker note, itset into motion a 'volcanic winter’ due to the filtering of the sun’s rays, andthe increased reflectivity of the atmosphere, where heat and sunlight arebounced back into space. But what is intriguing in this case is that evenwithout the Tambora explosion, the period 1790 to 1830 was already one of thecoldest on record. This period has officially become known as the 'DaltonMinimum’, after John Dalton, a London-based meteorologist who noted that thesun at that time did not seem as active in its production of sunspots and solarflares. Whether there is a correlation between this and the average amount ofsolar radiation emitted is still unclear. If this does exist, the effect wouldbe small—a fraction of a percent less, but, arguably, significant to our smallplanet orbiting so far away.
Adding further complexity tothe issue, there had been other significant volcanic eruptions in the yearsprior to Tambora — in the Caribbean, Japan, and the Philippines — in whichmassive dust clouds were the characterising feature. Looking at the Philippinoexample, 1814 saw the most destructive eruption of Mt Mayon ever. Killingthousands, burying whole towns and villages, the volcano spewed out millions oftons of ash and rock into the high atmosphere. When we put all these factorstogether, the sequence is thus clearer. With the world already suffering fromlower temperatures due to natural variations in the sun’s surface action, aseries of severe volcanic eruptions occurred. As a result, the accumulation ofash in the stratosphere rose to a historic high, to which the mammoth Tamboraexplosion substantially added, sending a savage cold spike throughout thealready cooler globe.
The consequences were dire.With the dramatic temperature swings, falling to near-freezing within hours,and with the sudden summer frosts and sustained drenching rainfall, all acrossthe Northern Hemisphere, staple crops such as maize and wheat failed to mature,and much livestock were killed. With agricultural production already low due tothe cooler preceding years, and with the rudimentary road systems of thosetimes rendering the importation and distribution of emergency food supplieslimited, this final blow was devastating. It resulted in widespreadmalnutrition, starvation, and outbreaks of diseases such as typhus and cholera.It created streams of starving refugees, large shifts of population, riots,looting of food warehouses, and other breakdowns of civic order. 100,000 peoplewere thought to have died in Ireland alone, with many times that figure on theEuropean continent. There was such mortality that the famine is now considered theworst of that century.
The question then is whether itcould happen again. And the answer is, since it has happened many times beforein geological history, a definite yes. The most extreme case occurred about70,000 years ago, when the world’s largest known eruption took place at LakeToba (relatively close to Tambora). This is thought to have plunged the planetinto a decade-long volcanic winter, and triggered the onset of the last iceage, a deep freeze of the planet which lasted many tens of thousands of years,all of which, some speculate, just about wiped out the human race. We can restin the assurance, however, that such events are extremely few and far between.You will certainly be able to enjoy your summer holidays, for a long time tocome.
SECTION 3: QUESTIONS 27-40
Questions 27-34
Complete the flowchart.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREEWORDS from the passage for each answer.
AYear without a summer
27 _________________
28 _________________
29 _________________
30 _________________
31 _________________
32 _________________
33 _________________
34 _________________
Questions 35-40
Answer the questions.
Write the correct letter, A-G,next to the questions.
Which location saw
A
America
B
Lake Toba
C
London
D
Northern Europe
E
Philippines
F
Switzerland
G
Tambora
35 __________ a positive effect of a volcanic eruption?
36 __________ the biggest volcanic eruption?
37 __________ scientific observation?
38 __________ a series of eruptions?
39 __________ buildings destroyed?
40 __________ a book written?
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