Glaciers

JONATHON KEATS

摘要

1 We're living in an ice age. For most of the past 2.5 million years, much of the planet has been glaciated, as Antarctica still is today. 2 Our current, more hospitable geological epoch, the Holocene, is a brief respite; today s glaciers have been in retreat for the past 12,000 years. 3 Geologists call this an intergla-cial, and caution us not to get used to it. Interglacials are caused by cyclical changes in Earth's orbit, and have nothing to do with human-induced climate change. 4 The ice could be on schedule to return as soon as the next several millennia - but only if we don't totally cook the planet in the interim. 5 The fact that the world was once iced over wasn't known until the 19th century, when Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz noted that attributes of the glacial landscape seen in the Alps could also be found far from any mountains. 6 Charles Darwin was initially incredulous that glaciers once had predominated - but later remarked that it was incredible he had failed to notice the evidence that Agassiz made appear obvious. 7 But then glaciers are full of surprises. For example: Astoundingly, glaciers flow, the mass of ice moving like a river. 8 Alaskan Natives know glaciers' activity well. In Athabaskan languages, spoken by many Indigenous peoples of the Alaskan interior, glaciers are grammatically treated as animate, like polar bears and people. 9 When a climber falls into a crevasse, a deep fracture in the ice, the frozen corpse will flow through the glacier and be ejected from its foot several decades later. 10 This gruesome process, known as corpse transfer, was one of the earliest clues that glaciers aren't simply solid blocks of ice. II Climate change is also turning up bodies - like the infamous Otzi the Iceman - and more as glaciers melt away. Over the past decade, researchers in Norway have recovered dozens of ancient items in a previously frozen mountain pass, including a complete Iron Age Roman tunic. 12 Glaciers provide data on past climate conditions, as well. When annual snowfall solidifies into glacial ice, air bubbles trap atmospheric gases and airborne particles ranging from pollen to soot. Scientists then drill into the ice and extract layered cylindrical cores for study. 13 But they'd better act fast, before global warming melts away these memories. For instance, the amount of ice flowing from Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier has doubled over the past three decades. 14 Such melting has the potential to expose pathogenic viruses trapped in the ice, some of which haven't been in circulation for more than 10,000 years. Paired with warming waters, melting glaciers also threaten to flood cities with a projected sea level rise of 1 to 3 feet by the year 2100.15 Not helping: Some algae get their drinking water by deliberately melting glaciers, producing dark pigments that absorb enough sunlight to thaw their frozen habitat. But they're too good at it for their own good - large blooms along the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet are increasing its summer melt rate by 10 percent. 16 During the Cold War, the U.S. built a city under that ice sheet, testing the viability of hiding missile silos there. 17 Smaller in scale but more ambitious in aim, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology built a habitat under an Alpine glacier last year. 18 The team was studying what it would take to build inside the moon's ice caps, where lunar ice would protect inhabitants from cosmic radiation. 19 Speaking of protection, the Swiss have begun covering glacial ice with white fleece blankets in the summer to insulate it and deflect heat from the sun. As daft as it sounds, the fleece is estimated to slow the melting of the Rhone Glacier by up to 70 percent. 20 Or you could just make a glacier from scratch. Exploiting plentiful water and freezing winter temperatures, artificial hillocks of ice are keeping Indian villages irrigated through the summer, making up for natural glaciers that used to do the job. Nobody is going to mistake these "ice stupas" for the Himalayas. But in the current climate, they may be the next best thing to waiting for the interglacial to end.

机译：1我们生活在冰河时代。对于过去的250万年来，由于今天的南极洲仍然是南极洲的大部分地球已经闲走了。 2我们目前，更热情好客的地质纪元，全新世，是一个简短的喘息;今天的冰川过去12,000年撤退。 3个地质学家称之为Intergla-Cial，并告诫我们不要习惯它。中间尖端是地球轨道的周期性变化引起的，与人类诱发的气候变化无关。 4冰可以在下一个几千年内完成时间安排返回 - 但只有我们在临时中没有完全烹饪行星。 5这个事实是，世界曾经冰过的事实是在19世纪才知道，当瑞士自然主义者路易斯·尼西斯（Louis Agassiz）指出，阿尔卑斯山中看到的冰川景观的属性也可以远离任何山脉。 6 Charles Darwin最初是令人难以置信的，冰川曾经占据过 - 但后者令人难以置信，他未能注意到agassiz所取得的显而易见的证据。 7但后来冰川充满了惊喜。例如：令人惊讶的是，冰川流动，冰块像河一样移动。 8阿拉斯加人当地人知道冰川活动良好。在Athabaskan语言中，许多土着人民的阿拉斯加内部的人们所说，冰川被语法被视为动画，如北极熊和人。 9当登山者落入裂隙中时，冰中的深部骨折，冷冻尸体将流过冰川，几十年后从脚下弹出。 10这种令人忧虑的过程，被称为尸体转移，是最早的线索之一，冰川不仅仅是固体冰块。 II气候变化也会调高身体 - 就像冰袋臭名昭着的冰袋 - 以及冰川融化的更多。在过去的十年中，挪威的研究人员在以前冻结的山口中恢复了数十个古代物品，包括一个完整的铁时代罗马轮胎。 12冰川也提供过去的气候条件的数据。当年度降雪凝固到冰川冰中时，气泡陷阱大气气体和空气中的颗粒从花粉到烟灰。然后科学家们进入冰并提取分层圆柱芯进行研究。 13但在全球变暖融化这些记忆之前，他们更好地行动。例如，在过去的三十年中，从南极洲的Thwaites冰川流动的冰量翻了一番。 14这种熔化有可能暴露在冰中的致病病毒，其中一些含量超过10,000多年。与温暖的水域配对，融化冰川也威胁到洪水城市，预计海平面上升1至3英尺的2100.15不帮助：一些藻类通过故意融化冰川来获得饮用水，产生暗色的颜料，可以吸收足够的阳光散热他们的冰冻栖息地。但是，他们太擅长了在格陵兰冰板边缘的自己的良好盛开，夏季融化率增加了10％。 16在冷战期间，美国建造了一个冰盖的城市，测试了在那里隐藏导弹筒仓的可行性。瑞士联邦理工学院的规模规模较小，但瑞士联邦技术研究所在去年的高山冰川下建造了栖息地。 18球队正在研究在月亮的冰盖内建立什么，在月球冰将保护居民免受宇宙辐射的影响。 19谈到保护，瑞士人已经开始覆盖冰冰与白色羊毛毯子在夏天覆盖，以防止它并从阳光下偏转热量。由于它听起来很愚蠢，葡萄原据估计，减缓罗讷冰川的熔化高达70％。 20或者你可以从头开始冰川。利用丰富的水和冷冻冬季气温，冰的人工小丘在夏天灌溉印度村庄，弥补了用于完成工作的天然冰川。没有人会把这些“冰佛塔”误认为是喜马拉雅山。但在目前的气候中，他们可能是等待中间批发到底的下一个最好的事情。

Glaciers

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