A New Ice Age Reading Answers

Dec 19, 2022

A New Ice Age Reading Answers has ten passages and 13 different types of questions. Candidates will be shown various question types with clear instructions in this IELTS Section. A New Ice Age Reading Answers is a passage extracted from E-ENG-school IELTS Reading Test With Answers Key. This IELTS reading passage A New Ice Age Reading Answers contains three types of questions- Choose the correct answer, Matching, and Complete the flowchart. IELTS reading samples come with a detailed explanation of each question in this passage. These samples ensure good IELTS reading practice for all the test-takers.

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Section 1

Read the Passage to Answer the Following Questions

A New Ice Age Reading Answers

William Curry is a serious, sober climate scientist, not an art critic. But he has spent a lot of time perusing Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s famous painting “George Washington Crossing the Delaware,” which depicts a boatload of colonial American soldiers making their way to attack English and Hessian troops the day after Christmas in 1776. “

Most people think these other guys in the boat are rowing, but they are actually pushing the ice away,” says Curry, tapping his finger on a reproduction of the painting. Sure enough, the lead oarsman is bashing the frozen river with his boot. “I grew up in Philadelphia. The place in this painting is 30 minutes away by car. I can tell you, this kind of thing just doesn’t happen anymore.”

But it may again soon. And ice-choked scenes, similar to those immortalized by the 16th-century Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder, may also return to Europe. His works, including the 1565 masterpiece “Hunters in the Snow,” make the now-temperate European landscapes look more like Lapland. Such frigid settings were commonplace during a period dating roughly from 1300 to 1850 because much of North America and Europe was in the throes of a little ice age.

And now there is mounting evidence that the chill could return. A growing number of scientists believe conditions are ripe for another prolonged cooldown, or small ice age. While no one is predicting a brutal ice sheet like the one that covered the Northern Hemisphere with glacier about 12,000 years ago, the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia.

“It could happen in 10 years,” says Tenence Joyce, who cha ừ s the Woods Hole Physical Oceanography Department. “Once it does, it can take hundreds of years to reverse.” And he is alarmed that Americans have yet to take the threat seriously.

A drop of 5 to 10 degrees entails much more than simply bumping up the thermostat and carrying on. Both economically and ecologically, such quick, persistent chilling could have devastating consequences. A 2002 report titled “Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises,” produced by the National Academy of Sciences, pegged the cost from agricultural losses alone at $100 billion to $250 billion while also predicting that damage to ecologies could be vast and incalculable. A grim sampler: disappearing forests, increased housing expenses, dwindling freshwater, lower crop fields and accelerated species extinctions.

Political changes since the last ice age could make survival far more difficult for the world’s poor. During previous cooling periods, whole tribes simply picked up and moved south, but that option doesn’t work in the modem, tense world of closed borders. “To the extent that abrupt climate change may cause rapid and extensive changes of fortune for those who live off the land, the inability to migrate may remove one of the major safety nets for distressed people,” says the report.
But first things first. Isn’t the earth actually warming? Indeed it is, says Joyce. In his cluttered office, full of soft light from the foggy Cape Cod morning, he explains how such warming could actually be the surprising culprit of the next mini-ice age. The paradox is a result of the appearance over the past 30 years in the North Atlantic of huge rivers of freshwater the equivalent of a 10-foot-thick layer mixed into the salty sea. No one is certain where the fresh torrents are coming from, but a prime suspect is meltin ị Arctic ice, caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that traps solar energy.
The freshwater trend is major news in ocean-science circles. Bob Dickson, a British oceanographer who sounded an alarm at a February conference in Honolulu, has termed the drop in salinity and temperature in the Labrador Sea— a body of water between northeastern Canada and Greenland that adjoins the Atlantic—”arguably the largest full-depth changes observed in the modem instrumental oceanographic record.” could cause a little ice age by subverting the northern.
The trend penetration of Gulf Stream waters. Normally, the Gulf Stream, laden with heat soaked up in the tropics, meanders up the east coasts of the United States and Canada. As it flows northward, the stream surrenders heat to the an. Because the prevailing North Atlantic winds blow eastward, a lot of the heat wafts to Europe.

That’s why many scientists believe winter temperatures on the Continent are as much as 36 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than those in North America at the same latitude. Frigid Boston, for example, lies at almost precisely the same latitude as balmy Rome. And some scientists say the heat also warms Americans and Canadians. “It’s a real mistake to think of this solely as a European phenomenon,” says Joyce.

Having given up its heat to the air, the now-cooler water becomes denser and sinks into the North Atlantic by a mile or more in a process oceanographers call thermohaline circulation. This massive column of cascading cold is the main engine powering a deepwater current called the Great Ocean Conveyor that snakes through all the world’s oceans. But as the North Atlantic fills with freshwater, it grows less dense, making the waters carried northward by the Gulf Stream less able to sink.

The new mass of relatively freshwater sits on top of the ocean like a big thermal blanket, threatening the thermohaline circulation. That in turn could make the Gulf Stream slow or veer southward. At some point, the whole system could simply shut down, and do so quickly. “There is increasing evidence that we are getting closer to a transition point, from which we can jump to a new state. Small changes, such as a couple of years of heavy precipitation or melting ice at high latitudes, could yield a big response,” says Joyce.

“You have all this freshwater sitting at high latitudes, and it can literally take hundreds of years to get rid of it,” Joyce says. So while the globe as a whole gets warmer by tiny fractions of 1 degree Fahrenheit annually, the North Atlantic region could, in a decade, get up to 10 degrees colder. What worries researchers at Woods Hole is that history is on the side of rapid shutdown. They know it has happened before.

Section 2

Solution and Explanation
Questions 14-17:
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

Question 14. The writer uses paintings in the first paragraph to illustrate

Possible future climate change.
Climate change of the last two centuries.
The river doesn’t freeze in winter anymore.
How George Washington led his troops across the river.

Answer: B
Supporting Answer: “Most people think these other guys in the boat are rowing, but they are actually pushing the ice away,” says Curry, tapping his finger on a reproduction of the painting.
Keywords: boat, rowing, pushing
Keyword Location: Paragraph A, line 5
Explanation: Most people believe these other guys in the boat are rowing, but they are actually pushing the ice away mentioned in the passage by Curry, tapping his finger on a duplicate of the picture. As the sentence says the picture was designed to portray climatic changes, even if it was being received differently.

Question 15. Which of the following do scientists believe to be possible?

The temperature may drop over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
It will be colder than 12,000 years ago.
The entire Northern Hemisphere will be covered in ice.
Europe will look more like Lapland.

Answer: A
Supporting Answer: While no one is predicting a brutal ice sheet like the one that covered the Northern Hemisphere with glaciers about 12,000 years ago, the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia.
Keywords: brutal ice sheet, Northern Hemisphere
Keyword Location: Paragraph B, lines 8-10
Explanation: While no one is predicting a brutal ice sheet like the one that covered the Northern Hemisphere with glaciers about 12,000 years ago, the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures by 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia. the article is talking about how climate change influences the temperatures like in the Northern Hemisphere and what the predicted cooling trend may be.

Question 16. Why is it difficult for the poor to survive the next ice age?

People don’t live in tribes anymore.
Politics are changing too fast today.
Abrupt climate change causes people to live off their land.
Migration has become impossible because of closed borders.

Answer: D
Supporting Answer: "To the extent that abrupt climate change may cause rapid and extensive changes of fortune for those who live off the land, the inability to migrate may remove one of the major safety nets for distressed people,” says the report.
Keywords: abrupt climate, extensive changes, migrate
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, lines 3-5
Explanation: To the extent that abrupt climate change may produce sudden and extensive changes of fortune for individuals who live off the land, the inability to migrate may eliminate one of the key safety nets for troubled people states the study. The temperature fluctuation can cause severe concerns and widespread changes in migratory patterns of tribes who historically travelled south in cooling times.

Question 17. Why is continental Europe much warmer than North America in winter?

Wind blows most of the heat of tropical currents to Europe.
Europe and North America are at different latitudes.
The Gulf Stream has stopped yielding heat to the air.
The Gulf Stream moves north along the east coast of North America.

Answer: A
Supporting Answer: As it flows northward, the stream surrenders heat to the air. Because the prevailing North Atlantic winds blow eastward, a lot of the heat wafts to Europe. That’s why many scientists believe winter temperatures on the Continent are as much as 36 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than those in North America at the same latitude.
Keywords: stream surrenders, winds blow, eastward, winter temperatures
Keyword Location: Paragraph H, lines 3-4
Explanation: Heat is transferred to the air via enders. Because the main North Atlantic winds travel eastward, a lot of the heat wafts to Europe. That's why many experts believe winter temperatures on the Continent are as much as 36 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than those in North America at the same latitude. The temperature in continental Europe is warmer as the winds blowing pick up the heat from the tropics and such.

Questions 18-22:
Look at the following statements (Questions 5-9) and the list of people in the box below.
Match each statement with the correct person A-D.
Write the appropriate letter A-D in boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet.
You may use any letter more than once.

List of People
A William Curry
B Terrence Joyce
C Bob Dickson
D National Academy of Sciences

Question 18. Most Americans are not prepared for the next ice age.

Answer: B
Supporting Answer: “It could happen in 10 years,” says Terrence Joyce, who chairs the Woods Hole Physical Oceanography Department. “Once it does, it can take hundreds of years to reverse.”
Keywords: 10 years,
Keyword Location: Paragraph C, lines 1-3
Explanation: It might happen in ten years, according to Terrence Joyce, chair of the Woods Hole Physical Oceanography Department. "Once it happens, it might take hundreds of years to undo." Terrance discusses how the harm is irreversible for a long time, and he is surprised to hear that most people do not consider this a major concern.

Question 19. The result of abrupt climate change is catastrophic.

Answer: D
Supporting Answer: A drop of 5 to 10 degrees entails much more than simply bumping up the thermostat and carrying on. Both economically and ecologically, such quick, persistent chilling could have devastating consequences.
Keywords: degrees entails, bumping, economically, ecologically
Keyword Location: Paragraph D, lines 1-2
Explanation: A temperature decrease of 5 to 10 degrees implies much more than merely raising the thermostat and continuing. Both economically and environmentally, such fast, continuous chilling might have severe implications. even a minor decline that might not be that important to detect might be suggestive of actually how seriously one should take it.

Question 20. The world is not as cold as it used to be.

Answer: A
Supporting Answer: the lead oarsman is bashing the frozen river with his boot. “I grew up in Philadelphia. The place in this painting is 30 minutes away by car. I can tell you, this kind of thing just doesn’t happen anymore.”
Keywords: lead oarsman, frozen,
Keyword Location: Paragraph A, lines 5-6
Explanation: The lead oarsman is stomping his boot on the icy river. I was raised in Philadelphia. The location shown in this picture is 30 minutes by vehicle away. I can assure you that incidents of this nature just do not occur any longer. The world's temperature has increased recently as a result of climate change and other occurrences, and it is said that this type of occurrence is no longer common.

Question 21. Global warming is closely connected to the ice age.

Answer: B
Supporting Answer: Isn't the earth actually warming? Indeed it is, says Joyce. ‘ In his cluttered office, full of soft light from the foggy Cape Cod morning, he explains how such warming could actually be the surprising culprit of the next mini-ice age.
Keywords: earth, cluttered office, Cape Cod morning
Keyword Location: Paragraph F, lines 2-3
Explanation: Joyce talks about his messy workplace, which is lit softly by the foggy Cape Cod dawn, and he discusses how global warming could really be the unexpected cause of the next mini-ice age. As this paragraph has stated, the heat's rise in temperature may be the reason for the next ice age.

Question 22. Alerted people to the change of ocean water in a conference

Answer: C
Supporting Answer: Bob Dickson, a British oceanographer who sounded an alarm at a February conference
Keywords: Bob Dickson, oceanographer
Keyword Location: Paragraph G, lines 1-3
Explanation: British oceanographer Bob Dickson raised the warning at a meeting in February. It was described as maybe the biggest full-depth alterations seen in the contemporary instrumental oceanographic record by Bob Dickinson at a symposium in Honolulu.

Questions 23-26:
Complete the flow chart below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

Question 23:

Answer: heat
Supporting Answer: laden with heat soaked up in the tropics, meanders up the east coasts of the United States and Canada.
Keywords: heat soaked, tropics, meanders
Keyword Location: Para H, lines 1-2
Explanation: Meanders along the east coastlines of the United States and Canada, heavy with heat absorbed in the tropics. Climate change and a phenomena similar to global warming have altered wind temperatures, generating heat waves in some areas.

Question 24:

Answer: denser
Supporting Answer: the now-cooler water becomes denser and sinks into the North Atlantic by a mile or more in a process oceanographers call thermohaline circulation.
Keywords: now-cooler, North Atlantic
Keyword Location: Para I, lines 1-2
Explanation: Oceanographers refer to this process as thermohaline circulation, in which the now-cooler water gets denser and descends into the North Atlantic by a mile or more. Cooler water lowers by about a mile as the air temperature rises because it is denser.

Question 25:

Answer: Great Ocean Conveyor
Supporting Answer: This massive column of cascading cold is the main engine powering a deep-water current called the Great Ocean Conveyor that snakes through all the world’s oceans.
Keywords: massive column, cascading, deep-water current
Keyword Location: Para I, lines 2-4
Explanation: The major force driving a deep-water circulation known as the Great Ocean Conveyor that snakes across all of the world's seas is this enormous column of cascading cold. The water that sinks powers this deep-water current, which runs across all of the world's major oceans.

Question 26:

Answer: freshwater
Supporting Answer: But as the North Atlantic fills with freshwater, it grows less dense, making the waters carried northward by the Gulf Stream less able to sink.
Keywords: North Atlantic, freshwater, Gulf Stream
Keyword Location: Para I, lines 4-6
Explanation: when the North Atlantic is filled with freshwater, it becomes less thick, which reduces the ability of the waters that are brought north by the Gulf Stream to sink. Freshwater influx into the North Atlantic causes a reduction in density and ease of flow.

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