Вариант 6 для 5–9 классов

A. How can we explain this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia.

B. That is why the Eastern United States, Northern Europe and East Asia have experienced extraordinarily snowy and cold winters since the turn of this century. Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier.

C. THE earth continues to get warmer, yet it’s feeling a lot colder outside. Over the past few weeks, snow arrived in Seattle and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers.

D. All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record.

E. They have ignored the snow in Siberia. Last week, the British government asked its chief science adviser for an explanation. My advice to him is to look to the east.

F. For a more detailed explanation, we must turn our attention to the snow in Siberia. Although it is well documented that the earth’s frozen areas are getting smaller, evidence of thinning Arctic sea ice does not explain why the world’s major cities are having colder winters.

G. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.

H. One phenomenon that may be significant is the way in which seasonal snow cover has continued to increase. In the past two decades, snow cover has expanded across the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Siberia, just north of a series of exceptionally high mountain ranges, including the Himalayas and the Altai.

I. It’s all a snow job by nature. The reality is, we’re freezing not in spite of climate change but because of it.

J. As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow over the continents. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased.