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AUTHENTIC ENGLISH 2

In 2024, severe weather events, including unprecedented flooding in Spain and Bosnia, and destructive hurricanes in the U.S., have been attributed to climate change, which is intensifying these occurrences. The Maldives, facing rising sea levels, has taken proactive measures such as building protective walls and artificial islands, while also seeking global cooperation to combat climate change. Experts warn that as temperatures continue to rise, extreme weather events will become more frequent and catastrophic, necessitating a shift in public preparedness and understanding of these risks.

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Thị Hồng Ngọc Nguyen
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18 views

AUTHENTIC ENGLISH 2

In 2024, severe weather events, including unprecedented flooding in Spain and Bosnia, and destructive hurricanes in the U.S., have been attributed to climate change, which is intensifying these occurrences. The Maldives, facing rising sea levels, has taken proactive measures such as building protective walls and artificial islands, while also seeking global cooperation to combat climate change. Experts warn that as temperatures continue to rise, extreme weather events will become more frequent and catastrophic, necessitating a shift in public preparedness and understanding of these risks.

Uploaded by

Thị Hồng Ngọc Nguyen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Host: The world has seen more severe weather events this

year than in recent history. Katie Haines has more on what's


behind this weather pattern.
Katie: Around The World, Flooding Became A Destructive
Force In 2024.
In October, record downpours in Valencia, Spain, caused
flash flooding. No one in the city had ever experienced this
before. It washed away thousands of cars, destroyed
homes, and left everything covered in mud. Hundreds were
rescued, but more than 200 people died.
In southeastern Europe, similar scenes emerged from
Bosnia. Unprecedented amounts of rain caused flash
floods that washed away roads, bridges, and railroad
tracks—wiping away entire villages. Dozens of people died.
Here in the U.S., Hurricane Helene hit Florida with a
destructive storm surge. Then it barreled its way into the
North Carolina mountains, where it unleashed the heaviest
rains to ever hit the region, causing destruction no one was
prepared for.
"The amount of precipitation that occurred in North
Carolina was so far outside the bounds of what anyone had
experienced. There was no background for what impacts
something like that would cause when it actually occurred."
Then came Milton, dumping historic amounts of rain on the
Bay Area and leaving some neighborhoods flooded for
weeks. Andrew Winters, a researcher with the University of
Colorado, says while hurricanes and rainstorms have always
been around, climate change is making them worse.
"So while the baseline patterns and processes are still the
same to produce these extreme events, you're basically
supercharging the environments that allow them to occur."

“For every 1 degree warmer that the air is, it can hold
about 7% more moisture.”
Claire Barnes is with World Weather Attribution, which
studies extreme weather events. She says that the Earth has
already warmed about 1.8°F in the last century, and the
temperature is still rising.
“I've heard people saying that this is the new normal, given
that we are currently on track for 2.6 degrees of warming
or thereabouts, within this century, we are only halfway to
the new normal, and we know that events like this are going
to get more extreme and more frequent as the world
continues to warm.”
Climate researcher, Ben Clark, with the Imperial College of
London, says the back-to-back hurricanes that devastated
Florida this year is an extreme event that become more
likely as the planet warms.
"The closeness of these two storms really symbolizes
something that could happen in the future and the danger of
climate change, which is that you could have multiple
events that have been made, each more destructive by
climate change affecting the same area in quick succession,
which is when the impacts start to become kind of really
catastrophic."
And to deal with these catastrophes, scientists say people
shouldn’t compare today’s risks with experiences in their
past. Instead, people need to be prepared for the
unexpected, the types of events that have no historical
comparison.
“Allowing the public to really understand the gravity of
something that could be outside of what you've ever seen
before, and at the same time, better modeling and
understanding of future impacts that are outside of what
we typically have seen are necessary to really prepare for
these events adequately.”
Host: The EPA says the frequency of single-day heavy
precipitation events has been increasing for years. Potential
impacts include: Crop damage, Soil erosion and flooding, as
well as an increase in injuries, drownings, and health
impacts like exposure to mould.
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Take a look at this photo. It shows the Maldives Islands-the lowest,
flattest country on Earth. The Maldives are in the warm waters of the
Indian Ocean. More than a million tourists visit the Maldives every year.
In our class we've talked a lot about climate change. But many people are
getting kind of tired of the topic. Why aren't we taking it seriously?
Maybe because most of the impact of climate change is in the future, it's
easy not to think about the effects.
But to the people of the Maldives, the effects are already very real. Most
of the Maldives are barely above sea level-just about seven feet. Any
increase in the sea level could lead to dangerous floods.
So the government took three steps to protect the country and its
population. First, the government built an 11.5-foot high wall
around Malé, the country's capital. The wall gave the city some
protection from a tsunami in 2004, but there was still a lot of
flooding. 88 people died, and more than 10,000 people lost their
homes as a result of the floods. But without the wall, it would
have been much worse. Scientists predict that global warming
will cause the sea level to rise between three and five feet by the
end of this century. Next time, the people of Malé may not be so
lucky.
But the Maldivian government is not waiting for the
next tsunami. It has built an artificial island about ten
feet above sea level. The island has a hospital,
schools, shops, and homes. The government hopes
that one day in the future, more than 100,000 people
will live there.
Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed knows that he
cannot protect his country by himself. Because he wanted to
get the world's attention, Nasheed held the world's first
underwater governmental meeting. In the meeting,
Maldivian leaders signed a document pleading with world
leaders to work together against climate change. However,
it was mostly a symbolic action and may not result in much
change.
The Maldives will be the first to feel the impact of climate change. For
these islands, even a small change in sea level may have serious
consequences. But what if all the ice melted? This was a question the
folks at National Geographic recently asked.
Naturally, the sea level would go up-and by a lot. Scientists predict that it
would rise by about 216 feet-about the height of a 20-story building. What
would our world look like with all that extra sea water? This map shows
that it would be very, very different.
For one thing, the Maldives would be gone forever. This map shows what
part of Asia might look like if all the ice melted. In China, cities on the
coast, home to 600 million people today, would disappear.
These predictions may seem dramatic. All of our ice is probably not going
to melt, at least not soon. At its current rate, scientists think that would
take about 5,000 years.
However, we are already seeing the effects of higher sea levels. These
changes have real consequences for ordinary people-like us.

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