奥地利阿尔卑斯冰川迅速融化

科学家竞相研究奥地利迅速融化的冰川

Scientists are racing to read a rapidly melting archive of climate data going back thousands of years — the inside of Austria’s Alpine glaciers.

科学家们正在竞相阅读一份关于气候数据的快速融化的档案，这些数据可以追溯到几千年前——奥地利阿尔卑斯冰川的内部。

Mountain glaciers are receding the world over as average global temperatures rise — a phenomenon that will be described in detail in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this week.

随着全球平均气温的上升，全球的高山冰川正在消退，政府间气候变化专门委员会本周的一份报告将详细描述这一现象。

Glaciers in Austria, on the eastern edge of the Alps, are particularly sensitive to climate change and have been shrinking even more rapidly than most, making it all the more urgent to examine their contents before they disappear, said Andrea Fischer, a scientist conducting the work.

负责这项工作的科学家安德烈亚·费舍尔说，位于阿尔卑斯山东部边缘的奥地利冰川对气候变化特别敏感，其萎缩速度甚至比大多数冰川都要快，因此在冰川消失前对其内容物进行检查就变得更加紧迫。

“We are now roughly at 1920. The rest has already been lost — everything from 1920 until now,” Fischer, of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research in Innsbruck, said of her work seeking Austria’s oldest ice at the top of the Weissseespitze, a peak more than 3,500 meters (2.2 miles) high.

“我们现在大约相当于在1920年。其余从1920年到现在的一切，都已经消失了。”因斯布鲁克跨学科山地研究所的菲舍尔在谈到她在魏斯匹兹山顶寻找奥地利最古老的冰时说，魏斯匹兹山顶是一座海拔超过3500米(2.2英里)的山峰。

“In the next two years we will lose another 70 years (of ice and data),” she added, describing ice at the top of the glacier.

“在接下来的两年里，我们将再失去70年(冰和数据)。”她在描述冰川顶部的冰时说。

At the top of this mountain, Fischer and her colleagues have drilled to the bottom of the comparatively undisturbed glacier to extract samples of its ice, which is being analyzed for information on the local climate thousands of years ago.

在这座山的山顶，费舍尔和她的同事们钻到了相对未受干扰的冰川的底部，以提取其冰的样本，这些样本正在进行分析，以获取数千年前当地气候的信息。

Fischer, whose work has contributed to the IPCC report, believes the ice could be 3,000 to 5,000 years old. Her samples are going through lab testing to date them.

费舍尔的工作为ipcc的报告做出了贡献，他认为冰层可能有3000到5000年的历史。她的样品正在实验室进行检测以确定具体日期。

The lower layers are more densely packed than those at the top, meaning that one meter of ice could include thousands of years of data.

较低的冰层比最高的冰层更密集，这意味着一米的冰层可能包含数千年的数据。

“The ice is only a few meters thick. In a few years, this summit will be completely ice-free,” she said.

“冰只有几米厚。再过几年，将完全无冰。”

While analysis of other materials, such as tree trunks, can provide information on the air temperature in summer, glaciers’ ice is a rare source of information on precipitation, she said.

她说，虽然对树干等其他材料的分析可以提供夏季气温的信息，但冰川冰是降水信息的罕见来源。

And much of it will soon be lost.

而其中大部分，很快就会消失。