1. Match the words in italics with their definitions

• a complex interconnection of all the food chains in an ecosystem;

• human made organic compounds composed of carbon, chlorine and fluorine that had many industrial and commercial applications but were banned because they attack the stratospheric ozone layer;

• the layer of the atmosphere between the troposphere and the mesosphere; it contains a thin ozone layer that protects life by filtering out much of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation;

• the accelerated destruction of ozone in the stratosphere by human-produced chlorine and bromine containing chemicals;

• a mass of cold air that circulates around the southern polar region, in effect isolating it from the warmer air in the rest of the world;

• the atmosphere from earth’s to the stratosphere; it is characterized by the presence of clouds, turbulent winds and decreasing temperature with increasing altitude;

• that part of the electromagnetic spectrum with wave-lengths just shorter than visible light; a high-energy form of radiation that can be lethal to organisms at higher levels of exposure;

• microscopic floating algae that the base of most aquatic food chains

• a gas that absorbs infrared radiation; examples include

carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and

tropospheric ozone, all of which are accumulating in the atmosphere as a

result of human activities, thereby increasing Earth’s temperature.

2. Translate into Ukrainian the word in bold types.

3. Critical Thinking and Review Questions

1. What is the stratospheric ozone layer? How does it protect life on Earth?

2. What is stratospheric ozone thinning? How does it occur?

3. What is the Montreal Protocol?

3. Language in Use

Complete the text with the words in the box

ice cover technique big chill flooding bubbles refrozen binary map radar environmental wind farm forecasting navigation research change

Two scientists from NASA and NOAA have developed a new space-based technique for monitoring the 1)……. of the Great Lakes that is so accurate it can identify a narrow channel of open water cut through the ice by an icebreaker — even at night.

“In the dark, it’s difficult to read a map that’s right in front of you,” said Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., one of the developers of the new 2)……... “Yet we now have a way to use satellite radars almost 500 miles [800 kilometers] out in space to see through clouds and darkness and map ice across the Great Lakes.”

Ice on the Great Lakes puts a 3)…….. on the U.S. and Canadian economies, affecting shipping, fishing and also public safety when winter and spring 4)………… are caused by ice jams. It has a significant impact on the regional environment and ecological systems as well. Yet previous techniques of analyzing satellite observations of the ice sometimes ice as water and vice versa.

The new method, co-developed by Nghiem and his colleague George Leshkevich of NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, Ann Arbor, Mich., not only corrects that problem, it also gives a more accurate analysis of ice characteristics, such as whether the ice is dense or full of 5)……….., and whether it has melted and 6)………….

The method uses a special dictionary that translates 7)………… digital data from satellite radar instruments on the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT-1/2, the European Space Agency’s European Remote Sensing Satellite 2 (ERS-2), and Envisat to identify and 8)………….. different types of ice over the Great Lakes. The researchers compiled the dictionary by pairing each observed ice type to a library of unique radar signatures that were measured on the lakes using a JPL-developed advanced 9)……….. aboard a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaking ship.

Leshkevich said the method has now been transitioned to NOAA for routine use in generating ice maps across the Great Lakes. “These maps will provide important information for 10)…………. management, ice 11)………… and modeling, off-shore 12) ………development, operational icebreaking activities in support of winter 13)…………., and science research.”

The more accurate classification of ice will also be useful for scientific 14)…….. into such questions as how the Great Lakes are responding to, and leading, climate 15)……….. in the upper Midwest.

Results of the study were published recently in the Journal of Great Lakes Research.