说不尽的天气话题

Weather 天气

by Mike Rayner 作者：迈克·雷纳

It's hardly surprising that weather is a favourite topic for so many people around the world - it affects where we choose to live, what we wear, our moods, and perhaps even our national characteristics. A sunny day can relieve the deepest depression, while extreme weather can destroy homes and threaten lives. 对于世界上许多民族而言，“天气”是个总被津津乐道的话题——这一点都不奇怪，天气影响我们选择在哪里居住，也影响我们的衣着、情绪，甚至是我们的民族性格。晴朗的天气有助减轻最严重的抑郁症，而极端天气则可能摧毁房屋，危及生命。

The effects of weather 天气的威力

Palm trees bent double in hurricane force winds, cars stranded in snow drifts, people navigating small boats down flooded city streets – images we are all familiar with from news reports of severe weather spells. But many of the effects of the weather are less newsworthy. 棕榈树在飓风中拦腰折断，汽车在积雪中寸步难行，人们驾着小船漂过洪水淹没的城市街道——我们在新闻报道中早已见惯恶劣天气的法力。但天气的许多其他影响并不如此引人注目。

“I’m feeling a bit under the weather” is a common complaint in Britain, especially on Monday mornings, and it seems that weather really can be responsible for moods. Studies have shown that changeable weather can make it hard to concentrate, cloudy skies slow down reflexes, and high humidity with hot, dry winds makes many people irritable and snappy. “这天气让我不太舒坦。”在英国，这是句很常见的抱怨，尤其是在周一早晨。看起来天气真有可能左右人的心情。研究表明，频繁变化的天气状态可能使人的精神难以集中，阴天可能降低反应速度，而高湿度同时刮干热风的天气会使许多人烦躁易怒。

Some suggest that the weather also leaves its mark on character, giving people from the same region similar temperaments, although it seems that economic, political and social factors are likely to have a much stronger effect than the weather. 有些人还提出，气候也会在人们的性格中留下印记，赋予同一地区的人相似的脾气。当然，在这一方面，经济、政治、社会因素的作用可能要比天气的作用大得多。

What causes changes in the weather? 什么造成了天气的变化

If you live in a place like Britain, where the weather seems to change daily if not hourly, you could be forgiven for thinking that the weather is random. In fact the weather is controlled by systems which move around areas of the globe. In the UK the weather depends on depressions, often called “lows”, and anticyclones, also known as “highs”. These systems start in the Atlantic Ocean, and make their way across the British Isles from the west to the east. Highs bring sunny weather, while lows bring rain and wind. 假如你居住在像英国这样一个天气一日一变——如果不是一小时一变——的地方，认为天气变化无规律可循是情有可原的。但事实上，天气是由在全球各地间运动的天气系统控制的。在英国，天气取决于低气压——通常被称为“低压”，以及反气旋——也被称为“高压”。这些天气系统在大西洋上生成，自西向东穿越不列颠群岛。高压带来晴朗天气，低压带来风雨天气。

The weather systems in tropical climates are very different from those in mid and high latitudes. Tropical storms develop from depressions, and often build into cyclones, violent storms featuring hurricanes and torrential rain. 热带地区的天气系统和中高纬度地区的天气系统很不相同。热带天气系统由低气压发展而来，常常形成热带气旋、伴随猛烈风暴的飓风和特大暴雨。

In modern times, human activity seems to be altering weather patterns. Gases produced by heavy industry change the temperature of the Earth’s surface, and affect cloud formation. Some researchers say that factories in Europe and North America may have been one of the causes of the droughts in Africa in the 1980s. 进入现代，人类活动似乎也影响着气候模式。重工业生产排放的气体会改变地表温度，影响云系形成。一些研究者称欧洲和北美的工厂可能是导致20世纪80年代非洲干旱的元凶之一。

Can we predict the weather? 我们能预测天气吗

The human race has always tried to guess the weather, especially in areas of the world where there are frequent changes. Traditional rhymes point to early attempts to identify weather patterns, popular poems include: 人类一直在尝试预测天气，特别是在天气变化频繁的地区。传统歌谣提示了辨识天气模式的早期尝试。流传较广的歌谣包括：

Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight; Red sky in the morning, shepherds’warning

Ash leaf before the oak, then we will have a summer soak; Oak leaf before the ash, the summer comes without a splash

Flies will swarm before a storm.

Rain before 7, clear by 11.

Two other popular traditional ways of forecasting the weather used pine cones and seaweed. When the air has a high level of humidity there is a higher chance of rain, when the humidity is low, there is more chance of fine weather. Pine cones and seaweed react to changes in humidity - pines cones open, and seaweed feels dry when the humidity is low, while high humidity has the opposite effect. 另外两种流行的传统天气预报方法依靠松果和海岸边的藻类进行。空气湿度高时，下雨的可能性较大；空气湿度低时，下雨的可能性较小。松果和海草对湿度的变化有反应——湿度低时，松果张开，海藻摸起来干燥，湿度高时则相反。

While folk wisdom can still provide a guide to help forecast weather, today’s methods of prediction increasingly rely on technology. Satellites, balloons, ships, aircraft and weather centres with sensitive monitoring equipment, send data to computers. The data is then processed, and the weather predicted. However, even this system cannot predict weather for longer than about week. 如今，民间智慧依然为人们预测天气提供帮助和指导，而现代天气预报技术越来越多地依靠科技。气象卫星、观测气球、轮船、飞机和装备有灵敏监测设备的气象中心将数据传输给计算机，随后进行数据处理和天气预测。然而，即使是这样先进的系统，也无法准确预测大约一周之后的天气。