European Heat Wave IELTS Reading Answers

IELTS Reading Answers Part One

IT WAS the summer, scientists now realize, when felt. We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: global warming at last made itself unmistakably Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying of a trickle and thousands of heat- related deaths. But just how remarkable it is is only now becoming clean.

IELTS Reading Part Two

The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78°c above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world’s lending institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records.

Part Three

That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context – but then you realize it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s (Erector, is prepared to say openly – in a way few scientists have done before – that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.

Part Four

Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are consistent with predictions” of climate change. For the great block of the map – that stretching between 35-50N and 0- 20E – the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the temperature norm, or “anomalies’: over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. 

As the graph shows, such is the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature – the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years – approaching, or even exceeding, 20 °c. But there has been nothing remotely like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.

Part Five

“This is quite remarkable,” Professor Jones told The Independent. “It’s very unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldn’t get this number. There turn period “how often it could be expected to recur” would be something like one in a thousand years. 

If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we’ve seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human actions.

Part Six

The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later the unprecedentedly hot summer was bound to come, and this year it did.

Part Seven

One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 230°c (73.40T) at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.50°c (77.90°F). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with a lowest figure of 27.60°c (80.60T) on 13 August, and similar record-breaking night-time temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.

Part Eight

The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by about 50C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged 75-94.

Part Nine

For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the high-temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself – defined as the June, July and August period – still comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat. At the moment, the year is on course to be the third-hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002 but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second place, Professor Jones said. 

The 10 hottest years in record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of the European summer of 2003.’The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record,” he said. “It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that. It was enormously exceptional.”

Part Ten

His colleagues at the University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are now planning a special study of it. “It was a summer that has not: been experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat,” said the center’s executive director, Professor Mike Hulme. “It will certainly have left its mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods have revolutionized the way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. “The 2003 heat wave will have similar repercussions across Europe.”

Questions Related to IELTS Reading Passage

Question Number One

Following are a few statements given from the passage above. You have to check the answers from the passage and write them correctly. 

#1. The ___________ has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been expecting.

Answer: summer of 2003

#2. Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with a lowest figure of _________.

Answer: 27.60°c

#3. The three months of June, July and August were the _________ ever recorded in western and central Europe

Answer: 

#4. The ____________ predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts.

Answer: United Nations

#5. At the moment, the year is on course to be the third-hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to __________. 

Answer: 1856

Question Number Two

Look at the statements below and after reading them, write TRUE or FALSE in front of them. 

TRUE – If the statement agrees with the information that is given above in the passage.

FALSE – If the statement disagrees with the information that is given above in the passage.

#1. But there has been nothing remotely like 1990.

Answer: FALSE

#2. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of the European summer of 2003.

Answer: TRUE

#3. Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are consistent with predictions” of climate change.

Answer: TRUE

#4. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 230°c (73.40T) at all between 7 and 14 August

Answer: 

#5. The stretching between 35-50N and 0- 20E – the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781.

Answer: TRUE

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