本文是【经济学人精读】系列的第一期，第一次写，如有错误请大佬见谅O(∩_∩)O
本文出自2020-04-18期的科学和技术（Science and technology）板块。文章较短，比较符合考研文章的字数。
主标题：The American west’s drought is its second-worst for 12 centuries
副标题：People are partly to blame
文章标题已经大体上描绘了行文的走向和作者的态度。考研的时候就没有这种好事啦，只有正文（通常也不是完整的）。标题没什么生词，需要注意drought是干旱，而不是dryness的同义词。Century源自于拉丁语centuria，然后提取cent作为”百“的词根，可以生成percent，centuple，centigrade（摄氏度，0-100，故得此名）等单词。
The south-west of the United States, together with adjacent parts of Mexico across the Rio Grande, is one of the driest parts of the North American continent. But, over the past two decades, even that expected dryness has been taken to the limit. According to Park Williams, who works at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the current lack of rainfall in the area constitutes a megadrought of a magnitude seen on only four other occasions in the past 1,200 years.
Adjacent：邻接。同根词汇：adjacency matrix(邻接矩阵)
Expected dryness：预料之中的干涸。Be taken to the limit：到达了极限。配合完成时态，可见dryness已经到达了极大值（Maxima, or local maximum），相当严重。
Constitute：构成。法律学名词：Constitute a crime。联合起来比较好记忆。其中con ‘together’ + statuere ‘set up’，表示共同组成，statuere由stat（stand）变化而来，这句话看不懂可无视，后续会写一些基础词形变化（关键词：格林定律，维尔纳定律，格拉斯曼定律）。
Mega：大。计算机名词：megabyte(MB), gigabyte(GB)。
Dr Williams and his collaborators studied the annual growth rings of 1,586 ancient trees from Oregon and Montana all the way down to the northern reaches of Mexico, in order to reconstruct soil-moisture back to 800ad. During warm, wet years trees grow fast, producing wide rings. During cold, dry ones they grow more slowly, producing narrow rings. During a drought, a tree might not grow much at all.
Tree rings：年轮。Ring能表示通用范畴的环状物，比如土星（Saturn）的行星环也叫ring。
Soil-moisture：土壤湿度，专业名词分开记忆就可以了。
没有什么生词了，句式也比较简单，简单来说就是湿度和年轮宽度成正相关。
As they describe in this week’s Science, the team identified dozens of droughts over the centuries in question. But four stood out: those of the late 800s, mid 1100s, 1200s and late 1500s. They then took the mean soil-moisture value for the current drought (which has lasted 19 years so far) and compared it with sequential 19-year averages from the previous four, one of which lasted nearly a century. This showed that the region is already drier than it was during the first three of the previous megadroughts, and is on a par with the event of 1575-1603.
in question:讨论中的。centuries in question就是标题中的提到的12个世纪。
辨析：（划重点）out of question （毋庸置疑）和 out of the question（不可能），可能大家都是强行记忆的吧。这里的两个question不是同一个意思，前者是质疑的意思，后者是询问，问题。question前没有the，而且没加s，说明不可数，就是质疑这一动作，比如question sb. 有the特指某一次询问。out of 可以翻译为“没有”，没有质疑=毋庸置疑，没有询问=别问了（不可能）。当然现在out of question已经见不着了（obsolete），考研可以不用记忆。
本段是举例子，知道大意就是current drought最严重就可以了。
Par 和 pair是同源词，拉丁语中意思是equal。on a par with可以理解为equal就可以了。我也不认识par，看长相和联系上下文不影响理解。
In a world where human actions are driving temperatures up, Dr Williams and his colleagues wondered how much people are to blame for this state of affairs. To estimate that, they turned to climate modelling.
承上启下的一段。be to blame 受指责。for：为。千万不能理解成blame for。
Climate models are able to re-run the past with and without the warming effects of human activity, offering a way to compare what actually happened with what might have done. In their simulated world in which anthropogenic emissions had not ramped up the greenhouse-gas effect, the team found that a drought did indeed still engulf the western reaches of North America during the first two decades of the 21st century. But this fictitious dry spell was considerably less severe than the real one—ranking 11th rather than 2nd in the period under study (see chart).
这里重点看图，红线和橙线，提现了人类活动对生态的影响。
Anthropology 人类学，philanthropist 慈善家。词根都是anthropo（人类）
Dry spell约等于drought，这里spell意思是一段时间。
<![endif]–>
Worse still for those who live in the area, Dr Williams’s research also confirmed suspicions that the area’s water-management policies, which govern abstraction rates from its rivers and aquifers, and which are mostly set on the assumption that 20th-century rainfall levels represent historical normality, are actually out of kilter. He found that, compared with most of the previous millennium, the 20th century was a period of abundant moisture. With nature providing less water than usual, and people taking more than seems wise, the future of the region looks parched indeed.
Those who live in the area，生活在这里的人。
第二句话比较难理解，可以缩写为Dr. confirmed suspicions。Policies are out of kilter。大意是不对劲，这个词组能记就记，记不住没事。按照逗号读问题不大，看不懂就省略逗号里的内容，意思懂就可以了。
最后一句简化为nature providing less, people taking more，这片土地的未来很parched（灼热）。
Comments
Post a Comment