Cold? Britain Is Actually Getting Hotter

Most Britons could be forgiven for thinking a new Ice Age is upon us. Small comfort, then, as we struggle through snowdrifts and cope with burst pipes, that the present cold is a sign the British climate is generally getting milder.

Ironically, most scientists now believe the short sharp shock of severe cold that has struck Europe for three winters running is an indicator that the world is growing warmer. The burning of fossil fuels is building up a blanket of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, creating a "greenhouse" effect.

Britain and Europe have certainly experienced weather this cold before. In the 17th century, the Thames froze solid so of­ten that it became a regular winter sports attraction. The weather then was so severe that it is sometimes referred to as the Little Ice Age. Even in the early 19th century, Britain's cli­mate was still colder than it is today. We still have a cherished picture of Charles Dickens's Christmases — although, in fact, snow at Christmas has been a rarity in southern England for 150 years.

Studies of temperature trends around the world show that it has been warming up since the middle of the 19th century. Most experts agree that this is a result of human activities. By burning coal and oil, we are putting carbon dioxide into the air. This acts like a blanket round the earth, trapping heat that would otherwise escape into space. As long as we keep burning fossil fuel, the trend is likely to continue. So why have we had such severe cold spells in Europe recently? According to researchers at the University of East Anglia, it is all part of the same process. When the climate of the globe changes, it doesn’t do so evenly. Britain and Western Europe are just unlucky in being in the path of a particularly significant wind shift.

By comparing the weather in different seasons, during the warmest and coldest years of the 20th century, the researchers have built up a picture of what is going on. Their key new discovery is that although spring, summer and autumn are all warmer, severe cold spells in winter are most likely over the whole of central Europe. So then, short cold spells mean it's generally getting warmer — but the bad news is it could get TOO warm. If the predictions come true — and the present changes are exactly in line with computer forecasts — within the next 40 or 100 years we shall see a change in climate as dramatic as the shift which ended the last Ice Age.

PART II. TEXTS FOR WRITTEN TRANSLATION

The day of the dinosaur

260 million years ago, the age of reptiles began. Reptiles of many kinds occupied the land and water of the earth. Some of them looked very like reptiles we know today-the tortoise and the turtle. Others were quite unlike any modern animals, unless we believe the stories about the Loch Ness monster. An important group of reptiles were the ancestors of today’s birds and crocodiles. This group included the prehistoric animals – the dinosaurs.

The earliest dinosaurs were quite small animals. They probably ate plants or animals that they-found dead already; their strong hind legs enabled them to run fast. Later dinosaurs were of many different types; some ate flesh (the carnivores), some only ate plants (the herbivores); some lived on land, some lived in the sea. For example, the famous Tyrannosaurus killed its prey. It stood 5 1/2 metres high, with huge teeth and claws. Another huge dinosaur, the giganotosaurus had very sharp teeth and strong legs to kill smaller animals. But the Brachyurous was a herbivore and lived in the water.

In spite of the size and variety of dinosaurs, they died out completely about 70 million years ago, in the Mezolic age. We know about them because explorers found the imprint of their bones-fossils in the rocks dating from that period. The first person to record the discovery of a dinosaur bone was an Englishman named Robert Plott in 1677. In the 1800s, people discovered more bones. In 1841, a theory that monster animals had lived on the earth millions of years ago was beginning to develop. The name given to the monster was - the dinosaurs!

BABY MAMMOTH FOUND IN PERMAFROST

A six-month old mammoth, found in the permafrost by a gold prospector, has been taken to Magadan and placed in a freezing chamber of the North Eastern Integrated Studies Institute, writes the newspaper “Izvestia”.

The baby mammoth was discovered on June 23 near the Kirgilyakh. Not a part, not a skeleton, not the hide but a whole mammoth was found. The baby was 115 centimetres long, 104 centimetres high, had a trunk 57 centimetres long and was covered with dark brown hair. You get the impression that the mammoth died yesterday, not nine or ten thousand years ago.

Scientists think the baby mammoth had drowned in a small lake or swamp. This rapid internment created conditions that saved the mammoth’s body from destruction. Found in the loose sediments that contained the mammoth were numerous twigs, bits of the trunks of birch and willow trees, grass and moss. This made it possible to picture the vegetation of the area where mammoths had lived even before doing a special paleobotanical analysis. Geological-morphological data gave approximate time of the death: the end of the last Glaciation period.

When mammoths are mentioned, areas of the north-east and north of Yakutia always come to mind. These areas have provided scientists with many surprises, including the find of a giant Mammoth in 1901 on the bank of Beryozovka river.

The mammoths who lived side by side with our ancestors vanished from the face of the earth ten thousand years ago. Protected from the cold by thick hair, the mammoths stood the rigorous, dry continental climate of that time very well. They were destroyed not by cold but by thaw.