《新世纪研究生公共英语教材阅读A》课文.docVIP

Stephen PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 1 《新世纪研究生公共英语教材阅读A》课文 Unit 3 Ocean of Sand From The Guardian 1. There is more deserts than sun and sand. On these two pages you can find out how plants, animals and people manage to survive in these apparently barren places. 2. All deserts are dry. The hot, sandy places we think of when we talk about deserts are subtropical deserts. They are found near the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn where the warm air which rises at the Equator sinks down again, giving a climate of clear skies and very low rainfall. The Sahara is almost one-third the size of Africa, and is nearly as big as the U. S. A. , the fourth largest country. It was not always a desert. Over millions of years it has been convered in ice, sea, forests and grasslands. 3. Desert winds are usually dry. Some deserts are in “rain shadow” areas where the winds have lost what moisture they had crossing high ground. Others are in the middle of continents where the winds blowing over them have lost any moisture gained from distant oceans. The Gobi desert in Mongolia in Asia is an example of such an inland desert. The Atacama in northern Chile is the driest desert on Earth. Parts of the desert had no rain for 400 years, from 1570 to 1971, and in other parts, rains had never been recordedn. One of the sandiest deserts is the Takla Makan. Sandstorms can whip up the sand as high as 3, 048 m(10. 000 ft). Windblown sand in the Sahara can be so fierce that it will sandblast the point off a car or aeroplane. The temperature at night in a hot desert can drop below freezing, to -4℃(24℉). During the day, the sand can be as hot as 79℃(175℉). Living in a desert climate 4. Deserts are difficult places in which to live. During the day they are very hot. In the Libyan Desert in North Africa the temperature on 13 September 1922 reached 58C in the shade! But desert nights are often cold because clear skies allow heat to escape into the atmosphere. The lack of water caused by lo