中国科学院大学研究生学术英语读写教程 Unit2 Geoscience TextA 原文和翻译

中国科学院大学研究生学术英语读写教程

Unit2 Geoscience TextA 原文和翻译

Are We Ready for the Next Volcanic Catastrophe?
我们准备好应对下一次火山灾难了吗？
Bill McGuire

1
In April 1815, the biggest known eruption of the historical period blew apart the Tambora volcano, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, 12,000km from the UK. What happened next testifies to the enormous reach of the biggest volcanic blasts.

1815 年 4 月，历史上已知的最大一次火山喷发将位于印度尼西亚松巴哇岛的坦博拉火山炸毁，该岛距离英国 12,000 公里。接下来发生的事情证明了最大火山喷发的影响范围之广。

2
The Tambora volcano had shown no signs of life for 1,000 years; a single eruption in the previous five millennia provided the only indication that magma was still churning far beneath. It was. On 5 April 1815, a titanic explosion hurled a cloud of ash to a height of more than 30km. Violent, but short-lived, the blast lasted just two hours, after which the volcano returned to a state of brooding menace. According to the lieutenant governor, Thomas Stamford (later Sir Stamford) Bingley Raffles, to whom volcanologists are indebted for his accounts of the eruption, the detonation was so loud that it was mistaken across Java for cannon fire, causing consternation among the British troops, which had ousted the Dutch and French forces just a few years earlier.

坦博拉火山在 1000 年内没有出现过任何生命迹象；此前五千年间仅发生过一次喷发，这是唯一表明岩浆仍在深处翻腾的迹象。事实确实如此。1815 年 4 月 5 日，一次巨大的爆炸将火山灰云喷至 30 多公里高空。爆炸虽然剧烈，但持续时间很短，仅持续了两个小时，之后火山又恢复了阴森恐怖的状态。副总督托马斯·斯坦福（后来的斯坦福爵士）·宾利·莱佛士 (Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles) 表示，火山学家们很感激他对火山爆发的描述，爆炸声如此之大，以至于爪哇各地的人都误以为是炮声，这让英国军队惊慌失措，几年前，英国军队刚刚赶走了荷兰和法国军队。

3
But the blast was small beer in comparison with what followed. After five days of relative calm, the climactic phase of the eruption began with a colossal explosion that launched a towering column of ash to the edge of space. For four or five days, utter blackness reigned across the island as the hurricane blasts of hot ash and scalding gas known as pyroclastic flows scoured the flanks of the volcano of everything and everyone, and drifts of ash metres thick entombed what few signs of life remained. When the explosions ceased and the darkness finally lifted, the view revealed was a vision of Tolkien’s Mordor; a grey landscape within which nothing lived or moved. The top 500m of the volcano was gone, blasted into smithereens, and replaced by a 6km-wide maw from which steam spiralled skywards. Communities on the flanks of the volcano had vanished, along with the lives of around 12,000 men, women and children. These, perhaps, were the lucky ones, as a further 60,000 survivors of the eruption succumbed slowly and agonisingly to famine or disease.

但与随后的事件相比，这次爆炸只是小菜一碟。经过五天的相对平静之后，火山爆发的高潮阶段开始了，巨大的爆炸将高耸的火山灰柱喷射到太空边缘。四五天后，全岛陷入一片漆黑，飓风般的热灰烬和滚烫的气体（即火山碎屑流）冲刷着火山两侧的一切，厚达数米的火山灰覆盖了仅存的少量生命迹象。当爆炸停止，黑暗终于消散时，展现在眼前的是托尔金笔下魔多的景象：一片灰色的景观，没有任何生命或移动。火山顶部 500 米不见了，被炸成了碎片，取而代之的是一个 6 公里宽的火山口，蒸汽从那里盘旋而上，直冲云霄。火山两侧的社区消失了，约 12,000 名男女老少也丧命。这些人或许是幸运的，因为另有 60,000 名火山爆发的幸存者因饥荒或疾病而缓慢而痛苦地死去。

4
But the consequences were not confined to this Indonesian backwater. The explosion was heard 2,600km away in Sumatra, while giant rafts of floating pumice - some 5 kilometres in length - clogged shipping routes for years. The 50 cubic kilometres or so of ash ejected over the course of the eruption returned to earth in the following days and weeks, leaving a thick covering as far away as Borneo, 500km to the north. In addition to the ash, an estimated 200 million tonnes of microscopic sulphur particles pumped into the stratosphere’, spread outwards from Sumbawa to form a giant aerosol veil that enclosed the planet and acted as a block to incoming sunlight.

但后果并不局限于印尼这片偏僻地区。2600 公里外的苏门答腊岛都能听到爆炸声，而漂浮的巨型浮石筏（长约 5 公里）堵塞了航运路线多年。火山爆发过程中喷出的约 50 立方公里的火山灰在接下来的几天和几周内返回地球，在 500 公里以北的婆罗洲留下了厚厚的覆盖物。除了火山灰外，估计有 2 亿吨微小的硫颗粒被泵入平流层，从松巴哇岛向外扩散，形成一个巨大的气溶胶面纱，包裹着地球，阻挡了阳光的照射。

5
The consequences for the developed societies of the northern hemisphere were dire. A dry, sulphurous fog draped itself across the landscape of eastern North America, causing temperatures to plunge and bringing unprecedented summer cold. In New York State, snow fell in June, while the bitter cold and killing frosts wiped out crops and halved the length of the growing season across much of the region. On the other side of the Atlantic, Europe saw summer temperatures down by 2°C compared to the average for the decade; the unseasonal cold accompanied by incessant rains and into the following winter by unusually powerful storms. Analysis of climate records reveals that 1816, the so-called "year without a summer, was the second coldest in the northern hemisphere of the past six centuries.

北半球的发达社会因此遭受了可怕的后果。干燥的硫磺雾笼罩着北美东部，导致气温骤降，带来了前所未有的夏季寒冷。纽约州六月降雪，严寒和致命霜冻摧毁了农作物，使该地区大部分地区的生长季缩短了一半。在大西洋的另一边，欧洲的夏季气温比十年平均气温低了 2°C；反常的寒冷伴随着持续不断的降雨，进入冬季后又出现了异常强烈的风暴。对气候记录的分析显示，1816 年，即所谓的“无夏之年”，是过去六个世纪中北半球第二冷的一年。

6
The alleged cultural implications of this “volcano weather” for Europe are somewhat whimsical. The brilliant, gas-charged sunsets have been declared by some to have provided the inspiration for some of J. M. W. Turner’s’ more flamboyant skies. In a similar vein, the damp and gloom of the 1816 summer has been charged with setting the scene for both Lord Byron’s grim vision Darkness, and Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein. For the less well-to-do of Europe, however, the Tambora eruption brought nothing less than hunger, disease and death. Widespread harvest failure resulted in the most serious famine for more than a hundred years, doubling the price of grain and spawning bread riots and widespread civil unrest. Such was the degree of breakdown of food supply that economic historian John Post has called the episode “the last, great subsistence crisis in the Western world”. Malnourished and weakened, the starving succumbed rapidly to disease, with typhus in particular rife. Many tens of thousands are thought to have died across the continent, including more than 40,000 in Ireland alone.

这种“火山天气”对欧洲的文化影响有些异想天开。有人声称，绚烂、充满气体的日落为 J. M. W. 特纳的一些更华丽的天空提供了灵感。同样，1816 年夏天的潮湿和阴郁被认为是拜伦勋爵的阴郁幻想《黑暗》和玛丽雪莱的哥特式小说《弗兰肯斯坦》的场景。然而，对于欧洲不太富裕的人来说，坦博拉火山爆发带来的无非是饥饿、疾病和死亡。大面积的歉收导致了一百多年来最严重的饥荒，粮食价格翻了一番，引发了面包暴动和广泛的民间骚乱。粮食供应崩溃的程度如此之深，以至于经济史学家约翰·波斯特称这次事件为“西方世界最后一次重大的生存危机”。饥饿的人们营养不良，身体虚弱，很快就染上了疾病，尤其是斑疹伤寒。据估计，整个欧洲大陆有数万人丧生，仅爱尔兰就有 4 万多人死亡。

7
How would we fare if faced with a Tambora-sized eruption today? Is it even something we could feasibly prepare for? Received wisdom has it that globalisation would make it easier to cope. Should the European harvest fail, so the thinking goes, we can always buy our food from elsewhere. The very interconnectedness of world markets may, however, make things worse - the collapse of food production across Europe, parts of North America and perhaps elsewhere, could result in global shortages which in turn would drive a dramatic rise in the cost of food commodities. At the same time, the intense worldwide competition for food supplies, scarce as a consequence of the harvest failures, could drastically reduce the range of products available in the UK, interfere with supply and distribution, and bring about a collapse of the supermarkets’ ultra-sensitive, time-critical, stock-control systems, leaving their shelves increasingly depleted. While the less well-off could be priced out of purchasing even staple foodstuffs, panic buying by those who can afford it could quickly empty the stores.

如果今天面临坦博拉火山规模的爆发，我们会如何应对？我们真的可以为此做好准备吗？普遍的看法是，全球化将使我们更容易应对。如果欧洲的粮食歉收，那么我们总是可以从其他地方购买粮食。然而，世界市场的相互联系可能会使情况变得更糟——欧洲、北美部分地区甚至其他地方的粮食生产崩溃可能会导致全球粮食短缺，进而导致粮食商品价格大幅上涨。与此同时，由于歉收导致粮食供应稀缺，全球粮食供应竞争激烈，这可能会大大减少英国的粮食供应范围，干扰供应和分销，并导致超市极其敏感、时间紧迫的库存控制系统崩溃，导致货架上的货物越来越少。虽然不太富裕的人可能买不起主食，但那些有能力购买的人的恐慌性购买可能会很快使商店一空。

8
On top of this, harvest disruption in response to volcano weather might extend far beyond Europe, and might - in ensuing decades - be exacerbated by the consequence of rampant climate change. In spite of our modern farming methods and distribution systems, the ramifications could be far more severe than we expect. It is also worth considering that while the Tambora blast was approximately 1,000 times bigger than the 2010 Icelandic eruption, it was a minor hiccup in comparison with the greatest volcanic explosions of history. The Toba eruption that excavated the world’s largest volcanic crater in Sumatra, around 74,000 years ago, for example, injected hundreds of times more sulphur gases into the stratosphere than Tambora. The severe “volcanic winter” that followed probably lasted for several years and saw a third or more of the earth covered with snow and ice and the wholesale dieback of vegetation.

除此之外，火山天气造成的收成中断可能会远远超出欧洲，并且在接下来的几十年里，可能会因气候变化加剧而加剧。尽管我们拥有现代的耕作方法和分配系统，但其后果可能比我们预期的要严重得多。还值得一提的是，虽然坦博拉火山爆发比 2010 年冰岛火山爆发大约 1,000 倍，但与历史上最大的火山爆发相比，这只是小菜一碟。例如，大约 74,000 年前在苏门答腊岛挖掘出世界上最大的火山口的多巴火山爆发向平流层喷射的硫气体比坦博拉火山多数百倍。随后的严酷“火山冬天”可能持续了数年，三分之一或更多的地球被冰雪覆盖，植被大量枯萎。

9
So, if a Tambora-scale scenario would be bad news, far worse could be lying in wait. While we can’t stop the next Tambora, nor handle its potential impacts on the climate and the harvest, we can ensure that contingency plans are in place to keep everyone adequately fed until the sulphur veil dissipates and temperatures return to normal. In the UK at present, contingency food supplies probably amount to little more than a few weeks’ worth. Some scrious policy changes are needed if a future volcanic blast is not to bring about another subsistence crisis.

因此，如果坦博拉规模的情景是坏消息，那么更糟糕的事情可能正在等待着我们。虽然我们无法阻止下一次坦博拉，也无法处理其对气候和收成的潜在影响，但我们可以确保制定应急计划，让每个人都有足够的食物，直到硫磺面纱消散，气温恢复正常。目前，在英国，应急粮食供应可能只够几个星期。如果未来的火山爆发不会带来另一场生存危机，就需要进行一些重大的政策改变。

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Hazarding a guess about when and where the next Tambora will explode is far from an exact science. Eruptions on such a scale seem to happen, on average, a few times every millennium and one estimate holds that there is a 1 in 10 chance of a comparable event in the next 50 years. The earth does not, however, operate to a timetable so such an eruption is equally likely to occur in any single year. There is even a chance that climate change may have a hand to play. Looking back at previous episodes of dramatic climate warming provides us with plenty of robust evidence for a vigorous volcanic response, most notably as our world heated up rapidly at the end of the last Ice Age. The reaction is most pronounced at ice-covered volcanoes, where melting reduces the weight acting on the volcanoes beneath, facilitating eruptions and even promoting the production of more magma. Coastal volcanoes may also be brought to eruption as the increased load of water, due to climbing sea levels, bends the crust around the margins of the oceans, squeezing magma upwards like toothpaste out of a tube.

冒险猜测下一次坦博拉火山爆发的时间和地点远非一门精确的科学。平均而言，这种规模的火山爆发似乎每千年发生几次，一项估计认为，未来 50 年内发生类似事件的概率为十分之一。然而，地球并非按照时间表运转，因此这种火山爆发在任何一年发生的可能性都是一样的。气候变化甚至可能在其中发挥了作用。回顾以往的气候急剧变暖事件，我们为火山爆发提供了大量有力的证据，最明显的是上一次冰河时代末期全球迅速升温。这种反应在冰封的火山上最为明显，融化会减轻火山下方的重力，从而促进火山爆发，甚至促进更多岩浆的产生。由于海平面上升导致水量增加，海洋边缘的地壳发生弯曲，岩浆像牙膏管中的牙膏一样被挤压出来，因此沿海火山也可能爆发。

11
No volcano erupts without warning signs, caused by rising magma triggering earthquake swarms and inflating the ground surface. The problem is that out of our world’s 1,300 or more active and potentially active volcanoes, we monitor only a few hundred. The Tambora eruption reinforces the unofficial volcanological axiom: The longer the wait, the bigger the bang. That rule of thumb is borne out by the fact that fully half of the biggest eruptions since 1800 originated at volcanoes that had previously been dormant throughout history. What we should be keeping a special watch on then, in order to prepare ourselves for the next arrival of Vulcan’s shock troops, are those seemingly innocuous volcanoes that have kept their heads down for centuries or even millennia. While there are too many candidates to keep a serious cyc on, the numbers can be narrowed down by focusing on those that have been recently “restless”; perhaps best regarded as the volcanologists’ term for “bubbling under”. Beyond that, though, it’s anyone’s guess.

没有火山喷发是没有警告信号的，这些警告信号是由上升的岩浆引发地震群和地表膨胀引起的。问题是，在世界上 1,300 多个活火山和潜在活火山中，我们只监测了几百座。坦博拉火山喷发证实了火山学的非官方公理：等待的时间越长，爆炸越大。这一经验法则得到了以下事实的证实：自 1800 年以来，最大的火山喷发中有一半源自历史上一直处于休眠状态的火山。那么，为了为下一次火神突击部队的到来做好准备，我们应该特别关注那些看似无害、几个世纪甚至几千年来一直保持低调的火山。虽然有太多候选火山无法进行严重的周期监测，但可以通过关注那些最近“活跃”的火山来缩小范围；也许火山学家用这个术语来形容“地下冒泡”最为恰当。除此之外，谁也说不准。