Reading test: Paris canal is officially clean enough to swim in this summer

This week's reading test is taken fron The Independent article Paris canal is officially clean enough to swim in this summer.

Read this text and choose the best sentence (A - J) for each gap. Two of the sentences do not correspond to any of the blanks. 0 is as an example.

A - after test results confirmed the water is clean enough for swimming – 0 Example
B - if it is considered a success
C - pollution has reduced by 25 per cent
D - that means many residents escape the city
E - the much-loved Paris Plages programme gets new water feature
F - the third is reserved for swimmers with a depth of 2 metres
G - to clean up its waterways for years
H - where people were allowed to swim in the Bassin
I - which has been running for 15 years
J - which links the Canal St Martin and the Canal de l'Ourq in the north east of the city


Paris canal is officially clean enough to swim in this summer

This summer Parisians will be able to cool off in the city’s canal (0) … . The city council had already voted in favour of canal swimming last year but the final go ahead hinged on the health tests results. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted the good news on Sunday with a message that read: "We promised! From this summer for Paris Plages, you will be able to swim in the Bassin de La Villette."

But water lovers will not have to negotiate the canal without assistance. Three swimming pools will be built bankside along the Bassin de la Villette, (1) … , at a cost of £1.1 million. Water for the pools will come directly from the canals. The Bassin sits along the south side of the Quai de la Loire in the 19th arrondissement. The temporary pool structures will be 90 metres in length and 16 metres across with varying depths. The smallest of the three pools will be reserved for children at 40cm deep. A pool for loungers will be up to 120cm deep and (2) … . 

The Bassin is one of the locations of the Paris Plages summer beach festival, (3) … . Paris traditionally sees an August exodus due to the combination of uncomfortable heat and tourists. In 2002, then mayor Bertrand Delanoë set up the first beach on the Rive Droite, bringing in sand and deckchairs to provide a haven for overheated city-dwellers. The scheme has been a huge hit and last year there was a popular one-off “open day” event (4) …, preparing the way for the pools.

Paris has been taking proactive steps (5) … . Celia Blauel from the City Council said: “The results show 15 to 20 traces of bacteria per millilitre, while the top limit is 100 per millilitre. We have been taking action for five years and the water is of a high quality.”

The city of lights has also been trying to improve all aspects of life around the river. Last autumn City Hall banned cars and motorbikes from the banks of the Seine, renovated pedestrianised areas and created a 10-hectare park known as the Rives de Seine filled with green spaces and sports pitches. Since traffic was banned (6) … .

The pools are scheduled to open on 15 July and will be accessible until the end of the summer, with the city estimating up to 1,000 visitors a day. They hope to repeat the scheme in 2018 (7) … .

KEY: 
1J 2F 3I 4H 5G 6C 7B

Working in 140°F heat

Unforgiving temperatures beat down on these hardworking salt miners every single day. The salt mines, situated in the Afar triangle, stretch across 100,000 square kilometres and at their lowest point are more than 300 feet below sea level.

Professional travel photographer and videographer Joel Santos travelled to the area to capture the dry beauty of this brutal expanse of land.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and complete the missing figures in the transcript.



This breath-taking drone footage of Ethiopia’s Danakil Salt Desert was captured by travel photographer Joel Santos. The desert’s huge salt crusts are often (1) ... meters thick. Each day around (2) ... camels and (3) ... donkeys pass through, transporting salt to a small local town.
It’s a hostile environment over (4) ... feet below sea level. Workers mining in the area toil in temperatures that often reach (5) ...°C. That’s (6) ...°F.
The surrounding landscape is one of volcanos, sulphur caked hot springs and black lava flows.
It’s one of the lowest, hottest places on Earth and definitely, one of the toughest places to work.

KEY:
1. 100
2. 2,000
3. 1,000
4. 300
5. 60
6. 140

The town where people endure -50 C

The industrial Russian city of Norilsk, sitting on the permafrost above the Arctic Circle, is the seventh most polluted city in the world. Rich deposits of nickel, copper and palladium provide mining and smelting industries that create jobs and continue to draw people to the harsh landscape from other regions of Russia.

Elena Chernyshova's stark and beautiful photographs of life in the city are featuring in a new exhibition, "Days of Night - Nights of Day" at the Half King in New York City. She spoke to Dan Damon.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1 When were deposits discovered in Norilsk?
2 At what freezing temperatures do people go out?
3 Why did Norilsk attract people in Soviet time?
4 What services are good in the city?
5 What do families sometimes come back to Norilsk after leaving the city?

Very rich deposits were discovered in the beginning of 20th century.  They thought just to create mines to do extractions of minerals and to send them to other regions, but after they decided to build factories and actually to create city.
It’s a city that’s freezing cold for much of year. Do people really go out in - 45 degrees weather?
Yes, we can of course, we can go out, - 45, - 50, we just need to wear quite good clothes to protect ourselves.
What brought people to Norilsk?
In Soviet time, it was very attractive economically, so a lot of people arrived there just to earn money to get a flat after in better regions of Russia, and they suppose to stay for five or ten years, for children like guidance, schools, and medicine are really good in the city.  The salary there is very stable, so they stay there just to have a job. And I know also some families that left Norilsk, they spent one year outside,  and after they just came back, because in some ways, the quality of life was better for them in Norilsk. It’s paradoxical, but it’s like this.

Key:
1 At the beginning of 20th century
2 -45, -50
3 It was attractive economically
4 guidance, schools, and medicine
5 Because the quality of life is better

Giant Antarctic iceberg set to break away

An iceberg expected to be one of the 10 largest ever recorded is ready to break away from Antarctica, scientists say. A long-running rift in the Larsen C ice shelf grew suddenly in December and now just 20km of ice is keeping the 5,000 sq km piece from floating away.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1 How long is the Larsen C ice shell?
2 What has surprised the team of British researchers in Antarctica?
3 How big will the new iceberg be if it breaks off?
4 How long did it take Larsen B to disintegrate when icebergs broke off in 2002?
5 What are the consequences for the environment when ice shelf loses so much ice?
 
Stretching for around 100 miles in length, the hundred-yard wide rift in the Larsen C ice shell has grown rapidly in recent weeks. Just 12 miles of frozen material is keeping this enormous iceberg from drifting away into the sea. Collapsing ice shelves are not uncommon in Antarctica. As these picture show, these fragmentations can dramatically affect the life, creating icebergs of all shapes and sizes.
A team of British researchers have been travelling down to Antarctica to monitor the growing crack in the in the Larsen sea ice shelf for several years, but they have been surprised by the dramatic expansion in the rift that’s taken place in just two weeks in December.
What we’ve found is that the rift that’s been in there in this ice shelf for a number of years has broken through another 18 kilometres and is now at risk of giving birth to an iceberg about a quarter of the size of Wales. And the significance of that is that it’s a very large iceberg that will go out into the open ocean, but also that the remaining ice shelf, we believe, will be less stable than before the rift was there.
When large icebergs break off the edge of an ice shelf, like the Larsen B in 2002, it can have a dramatic effect on the stability of the entire structure, and Larsen B most of the remaining shelf disintegrated in less than a month.
Experts at the British Arctic Survey are worried that any new iceberg formation could have long-term consequences.
When the ice shelf loses this ice, it may then start to collapse and if that were to occur then the glasses that feed the ice shelf could flow faster and contribute more to sea levels rise over the next few decades.
When it sheers away, the new iceberg will be one of the biggest ever recorded, about 50 times the size of Manhattan Island. But despite concerns over the impacts on global warming, researchers say they have no evidence that climate change is playing any significant role in the new icebergs formation.
Matt McGrath, BBC News.

Key:
1 around 100 miles
2 how quickly the crack is growing
3 a quarter the size of Wales
4 less than a month
5 it contributes more to sea levels rise

Disappearing glaciers

Glacier National Park in Montana has a name to live up to. But it’s a name that seems to be living on borrowed time, as Conor Knighton discovered On the Trail.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions.



1 How far have Conor and Dan been walking before reaching their destination in Montana’s Glacier National Park?
2 What does Dan compare rephotography to?
3 When will the glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park have disappeared?
4 How will Dan feel if glaciers disappear?
5 How far has the glacier in Kenai Fjords retreated in 2016?
6 What are the photos of glaciers being used for these days?


Glacier National Park in Montana has a name to live up to. But it’s a name that seems to be living on borrowed time, as Conor Knighton discovered On the Trail.
Like most photographers, Dan Fagre is obsessed with getting the perfect shot. We’ll have hiked around 12 miles all together, up steep mountain passes, across icy streams, all to photograph a small slice of Montana’s Glacier National Park.  Visitors take snapshots of the views, but when Fagre looks through his lens, he sees something different. He’s trying to take a picture of what isn’t there, the tons and tons of ice that have disappeared.
Oh my gosh! None of it is there!
None of that is there, so…
Fagre is an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. 
So in 1938 then, the glacier filled this entire basin…
Using material from the park’s archive, the USGS has been rephotographing old black and white images.
Rephotography is really interesting, it’s a little bit of a detective story. You’re trying to find the exact spot that a photographer stood decades before and shoot the exact same picture, and then compare the changes between those two time spans.
In a short amount of time, the change has been dramatic.
So 50 years ago, what’d we been looking at?
50 years ago we would have been under ice right now.
Oh, really? Right here?
Right here. We would’ve been under a lot of ice.
The sign says Glacier National Park, but some models have suggested that these Montana mountains will lose, if not all of their glaciers, by 2030. Soon there won’t be any ice left to photograph.
You know, like a lot of people, I really like the glaciers in Glacier Park, and while I will be sad to see them go personally, I think my role as a scientist is to make sure that everybody understands the pace at which they’re disappearing, and the reasons for that, so that, again, better decisions could be made societally.
The reason, scientists explain, is climate change; the planet is heating up.  Park Service Director John Jarvis has said that climate change is fundamentally the greatest threat to the integrity of our national parks that we have ever experienced.
Visiting the parks this year, I’ve experienced it first hand. At Kenai Fjords in Alaska, the massive glaciers will survive longer than those in Montana, but they’re still shrinking.   Walking into the park, there are signs where there was once ice,1899, 1926, 1961, all the way up to 2005, markers of where this glacier used to be. 
Last year, President Obama paid a visit to Kenai Fjords to talk about climate change.
That is melting glaciers and blocks of ice, that’s raising sea levels…
In 2016, this glacier has already retreated over 250 feet. That’s a new record.
Well, the glaciers have been receding, and the surprising thing, the thing that lets us know that this is an indication of climate change, is the rate of retreat has increased drastically.
At the park Ranger Fiona North also uses photos to illustrate the before and after.
So this one, this is 1992.
Wow, it used to come down. It covered this whole green area.
From Alaska to Montana, photos that were originally taken to publicize these natural wonders are now being used to publicize how they’re disappearing. It packs a punch that a chart or a graph just can’t deliver.
I think people are extremely visual and, you know the old saying about one painting or photo being worth 1,000 words. We get a lot of information visually, and we tend to trust that even more than what we hear.
With these photos, the message is clear: The pace of change is anything but glacial.

Key:
1 twelve miles
2 a detective story 
3 by 2030
4 sad
5 250 feet
6 to publicise how they are disappearing

Worst drought in 30 years hits South Africa

In late 2015 South Africa faced one of the worst droughts to hit the region in 30 years.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1 When was the worst drought to hit South Africa before this one?
2 Which sector of the South African economy has been the worst hit by the drought?
3 Why is the government being criticized?
4 How is the drought going to affect food security?

The devastating effects of El Nino, the lack of rain accompanied by heat waves. This is the worst drought to hit South Africa since 1982. Millions are facing water shortages.
This is rather unusual, because under normal circumstances, I’ll be in waist height in water here. This reservoir has completely dried up, and it just goes to show how severe the drought is.
The country’s farmers have been the hardest hit, six of Tosogalanis’ cows starved to death, many more are missing, he fears the worst. He wanted to show us the dried-up watering hole, only to find one of his cows trapped in the mud, close to death. There was no time to waste, more men power was needed, and the BBC team had to put the camera down and assist with the rescue…
Come on, here you go.
This is heart-breaking, I am losing out more than I should be gaining, it’s only a matter of time before those who work for me become unemployed.
Without some intervention, the stark reality facing many farmers is that more livestock will keep dying. Many commercial farmers have criticized the government’s slow response in helping out.
At this stage, there is no help, because of these clouds, we are still waiting to hear what are the programmes that are going to be implemented for fighting this drought. We didn’t even plant, so it’s going to be… to affect our food security, it’s going to affect the price and the poorest of the poorest that you always talk about, they’re the one who are going to be worse off.
The prospects of rainfall look promising. But the ever-changing weather patterns brought by climate change could still affect the country’s food security.

Key:
1 1982
2 farming 
3 for the slow response in helping
4 farmers haven't planted, the price is going to be affected and poor people will be worse off

Is this safest place in the world?

A special vault has been built in the Arctic to store thousands of seeds, as scientists fear the impact of climate change and prolonged conflicts could have devastating consequences on food crops around the world.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1 How often do scientists get the deliveries of seeds?
2 How many lines of securities are there?
3 What has the store been designed for?
4 How long can the crops survive?
5 What's the temperature in the last barrier to the store?
6 How many plastic packets with seeds are there?
7 Apart from drought, what other threat is mentioned?

In the punishing cold of an Arctic mountain, in the remote Svalbard islands, a doorway leads to what is meant to be the safest place on earth. Scientists are on their way, approaching through this isolated and hostile terrain. And I am with them. As they are carry a precious cargo of seeds, to be kept out of the way
of whatever climate change might bring.
How often do you get these deliveries?
We have deliveries three times a year.
The box of seeds is about to go through the first line of security. There are half a dozen in all. I have just come down the access tunnel that is cut into the mountain. This place is 130 metres above sea level, because if the worst happens and global warming melts all of the polar icecaps, this project will still be safe. The deeper inside the mountain we go, the more the temperature drops. The store is designed to survive any natural disaster.
The seeds can last here for a very long time. It depends on what the crop is, but some of the crops may survive for more than 4,000 years.
You're really imagining this place functioning, keeping the seeds safe for 4,000 years?
It's difficult to say. I'm sure that the pharoahs thought their pyramids would last long, and they did.
The last barrier to the store itself. Inside here, it is minus 18 Celsius. The rows of shelves are filling up with seeds from all over the world. There are samples of nearly half of the most important food crops, brought here just in case. Samples of seeds used to be held in glass test tubes. Now they are kept in little plastic packets and there are more than 800,000 of these in this vault. Everywhere you look there are examples of why this place matters.
There are seeds from Syria, plants that are good at coping with drought, and some have just been returned to the Middle East. When harvests are ruined by extremes of weather, having backup copies of key seeds is essential.
Another threat is flooding, which can damage national stores of seeds. This happened in the Philippines. And with industrial scale farming, most food comes from just a dozen varieties of plants, so keeping different genetic types helps to guarantee supplies.
It is for the survival of mankind in the future. We need diversity. All the different kinds of plant material, to get food for the future. We have a lot of problems now, climate change, environmental problems, and to tackle that, we need genetic variation.
So, in these remote mountains, this place is meant to be a safeguard against apocalypse, an insurance policy for a warming world.
David Shukman, BBC News, in Svalbard in the Arctic.
Key:
1 Three times a year 
2 Half a dozen (6)
3 To survive any natural disaster
4 (For more than) 4,000 years 
5 -18ºC
6 800,00
7 Flooding

Listening test: Natural disasters

In this week's listening task we are going to practice the heading-matching kind of task.
Listen to some people talk about their experience of natural disasters and choose the sentence A-H which corresponds to each of them. There are two sentences you do not need to use.



A - This speaker didn’t experience the worst manifestation of the natural disaster
B - This speaker didn’t pay attention to someone’s advice
C - This speaker had his movements limited
D - This speaker helped someone in a difficult situation
E - This speaker saw earth and rocks moving
F - This speaker was blinded by the natural disaster
G - This speaker was helped by a stranger
H - This speaker’s experience was not as serious as a violent tropical storm

Photo: elllo.org

Speaker 1
I was in a typhoon in Hong Kong, and I just arrived with a big heavy backpack, and I had to hide in a telephone box while the street flooded and the water came up around me.

Speaker 2
Natural disaster? No, I haven't been in a natural disaster. Unfortunately I was very close to a bomb which went off in Manchester when I was about sixteen years old, which was quite scary, but probably not as scary as a tsunami or a typhoon or something.

Speaker 3
Oh, yes, yes. I have been in a natural disaster. I forget what year but Hurricane Yuniki in Hawaii, but I lived on Ohau so we got the eye of the hurricane so it wasn't like harsh at all. In fact, I remember when it hit, I remember telling my parents, I wanted to go out and fly a kite because it looked so nice outside, so it wasn't really that bad of an experience for me.

Speaker 4
Yes, I have. I've been in a fire. A really big one actually. It was just very scary. There was just smoke everywhere, and I couldn't see anything. My eyes were hurting. I was choking, and I really thought I was going to die, but I was rescued by an old man passing by.

Speaker 5
OK, have I been in a natural disaster? Well, I've actually seen one happen while I was driving, and this was along I think the coast. I think it's called the Pacific Ocean Highway, if I'm not wrong. Anyway, there was in December 2004 I think, it was ... there was a big landslide during a the raining season in Los Angeles, and while I was driving I actually saw it, and then I didn't know what was damaged, but it was all over the news, and then it was bad.

Speaker 6
Yeah, actually, I was staying with friends in Norway and we were camping and we got hit by a blizzard and it was really frightening, but luckily I was with some big Viking Norwegian guys, and they knew exactly what to do, because I didn't. It was really ... you couldn't see anything. It was so white and the snow was so heavy and it actually hurt quite a lot, and it didn't help that it was absolutely freezing.

KEY: 
1C 2H 3A 4G 5E 6F

Talking point: Water

This week's talking point is water. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas flow more easily when you meet up with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.

Which of these ways to collect or process water are you familiar with?
Which of the systems re already in use in your country?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each system?

desalination plants - dams - underground water collection - 

fog nets - residential water collection tank

Do any areas in your country have problems with water shortages?
What is done about it?
What kinds of water problems have you experienced  in your home or community?
Think of a water-related disaster you remember and talk about it. Mention the following:

event - area affected - damage cost - lives lost - reconstruction done or being done

What's the most you have paid for a bottle of water? Where? How much?
Should we really drink bottled water?
Do you prefer drinking bottled water or tape water? Why?
How much water do you usually drink?
What is your monthly water bill?
Why do you think it is important to clean up polluted rivers and lakes?
What different ways do people use water every day?

To illustrate the point you can watch the National Geographic video below on drought and water shortages in Lompico, California, which is forcing locals to rethink the way they are using water.



1 Lois Henry President, Lompico County Water District Board
Mark Twain said, "Whiskey's for drinking and water is for fighting." We're going to have wars
over water one of these days because water is vital. Here in Lompico, we have about five-hundred
households. It's not really a town, it's just a canyon in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The only business is...
the Water District. It's just a bunch of homes that started off as a resort area. Our claim to fame here is
that Jerry Garcia lost part of a finger in Lompico Creek with an axe.
2 Kevin Collins, Conservation Activist and Lompico Resident
I measure rainfall. We got less than twenty inches this winter. The average here, long term average,
is 45-50 inches. This is a third year of a below average series of winters. So if the stream dries up
since my house is dependent on it for a water supply, I'll have to pay to have water trucked into a fire-
fighting storage tank that I have. The creek hasn't dried up in the 25 years I've lived here, but this is an
unprecedented rainfall year.
3 Andrew Fisher Hydrogeologist  University of California, Santa Cruz
We have clusters of dry years and clusters of wet years as well. There's an additional level of variability
you can now layer on top of all of that which has to do with climate change. One of the big areas of
the planet that's being affected is the hydrologic cycle. There are changes in the way air is moving and
the way water is moving. We see in the San Francisco Bay area, for example, in the last hundred years
there's been an increase in the intensity of storms. So what that means is during a given year, we're now
more likely to get a larger fraction of our rain during a smaller number of events. You tend to get more
run off with those big storms. The streams tend to peak and flood. They tend to deliver more of that
water to the ocean. There's less opportunity for that stream water or the water coming off of hill slopes
to soak into the ground and recharge aquifers.
4 Lois Henry, President Lompico County Water District Board
I've cut my water usage in half. Come on in. One of the things I did to conserve water was to buy a new washer. I collect water in a bucket while the water is heating up and then I bring the water in the house. And then I'll take some of it and heat it up in this teapot and I will take that hot water and wash my dishes. And then I take that water and I water my plants. California Department of Public Health contacted me and said it would be possible for us to get a grant for an emergency intertie with San Lorenzo Water District.
5 Richard Rogers Director of Operations San Lorenzo Valley Water District
They really squeaked by in these last couple of weeks. I mean it was a day away, I think, from trucking
water in. This pipe will climb up approximately 700 feet in elevation to get to the Lompico water
system. Because the state's in an unprecedented drought, we're all having water conservation. San
Lorenzo Valley water starts May 1st with a 20% mandatory restrictions. Lompico, they're in and out
right now, of rationing. When your neighbor knocks on your door and says you need water, you help.
6 John Stipes Fire Chief Zayante Fire Protection District
From maybe October through January there was probably 70 different vegetation fires that were lit in
the county this year, where typically we'd have maybe a dozen. These fuels out here, these grasses out
here, are probably twice as dry right now as they normally are this time of year.
7 Kevin Collins Conservation Activist and Lompico Resident
California's entire landscape has been modified over the last hundred years. It's been plumbed. Every
major river system in the entire state except for one on the Oregon border is dammed and there's a huge
network of aqueducts and gates and pumps that move water from one part of the state to the other.
The farmers are going to be screaming bloody murder this summer because their water allocation just
doesn't exist. And so there will be fights over what's going to happen in the Sacramento Delta. They'll
be accusing conservation advocates of putting them out of business because we don't want the salmon
to go extinct and other species that are blinking out in the delta. There's going to be a huge political
battle this summer in California over who gets what water that still exists.

Extensive listening: California’s water crisis

 A few  months ago CBS 60 Minutes aired the segment Depleting the water, which dealt with California's groundwater crisis. California is entering its fourth year of a record-breaking drought. Last year was the driest since the state started keeping records more than a hundred years ago. But if you pay a visit to California's Central Valley you'll see acre upon acre of corn, almond trees, pomegranates, tomatoes, grapes. And what makes them all possible: water. Where do you get water in a drought?

You can read the full transcript here.

Grassless Lawns Catching On During California Drought

The California drought has caused many residents to rethink their water use. To help conserve water, some Los Angeles County residents are taking advantage of a rebate program that allows them to convert their lawns to a landscape that requires little to no watering, virtually for free, and lower their water bills too.



It’s a desert out here in Southern California and expecting every homeowner to have lush green lawns isn’t exactly realistic anymore.
They’re doing my rental house today across the street which is a big yard and they are doing the front and the back which is going to save me a lot of water.
Turf Terminators launched last summer so we’ve been going at it for about ten months and we’ve grown from, you know, 3 employees to 500. We realized that turf removal rebates that are available for the replacement of turf grass were rising in value so we put two and two together and figured out that we can run a business doing drought tolerant landscaping here.
We’ve got a variety of drought tolerant vegetation. Primarily here we are going to be installing some lavender shrubs, we have kangaroo paw in the back, and also tea tree here. So, it’s a good variety. You get a lot of color in these yards, but none of these require much maintenance and certainly not a lot of water.
Green grass is, you know, a staple of American life. It’s been amazing to see so many people willing to stand up and sort of take action. It’s all part of a transformation of California’s relationship with water, I think. When we actually, perform services in a neighborhood, about 3.5 neighbors make the transition as well. Mr. Smith has ten of his neighbors who have already signed up with us.
I’ve been living here 48 years. No one in this area haven’t been living here less than 25 or 30 years. I know all of my neighbors on this block and quite a few of them all around the area. Majority of the people over here are senior people and they are retired and on a fixed income.
This is absolutely free. If you think about the amount of water that you’re saving …
Fixed income man, I tell you. And with this program, I think I can live with that. I’ll be Hopalong Cassady on that one.
Yes, I was the first lawn on the block to change from grass. My neighbor, Mr. Smith, he was the one who introduced me to it. I just finished this last week.
Hot potato …
My grandkids, my dog, and myself love the astroturf. My water bill is half of what it used to be since I had the astroturf. A lot of people think that just, somebody is just talking about a water shortage, I can do all I want with my water. But, it’s a real threat of us running out of water. As the water bill gets higher, a lot of people will think I should have done this and then if it becomes mandatory then they are going to wish they had got it done beforehand. It’s almost like Las Vegas, you go to Las Vegas, just about everybody has this type of lawn

Extensive listening: Wild weather

In the first episode of this BBC documentary series Wild Weather Richard Hammond focuses on the wind and how it actually starts. He visits one of the windiest places on the planet, walks into the centre of a man-made tornado and creates a 10-metre high whirlwind - made of fire!

Along the way he is part of a world first when he joins up with an American meteorologist called Reed Timmer and a bizarre vehicle known as The Dominator III. Their aim is to succeed in doing what no one has ever done before, fire a probe into a tornado to measure its speed where it is at its fastest - right next to the ground. As Reed explains, 'near the base of the tornado is one of the biggest mysteries of tornado science and it's also the most important to understand because those are the wind speeds... that cause all the destruction'. To put that right, Reed and his team take The Dominator into the middle of a real live tornado and attempt to fire a probe into the very heart of it.

Richard also visits one of the few places on the planet capable of duplicating a real-life tornado. The Wind Engineering, Energy and Environment Research Institute (or WindEEE for short) in Ontario in Canada, hadn't even opened its doors when Richard asked them to take part in an experiment. The 23 million dollar facility is one of the the world's first hexagonal wind tunnels. As Richard says, 'I've got goosebumps. And that's not just because it's cold in here!'

Richard braves the winds and temperatures of -50 degrees fahrenheit to take a trip outside on top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. On April 12th 1934, that station measured one of the highest wind speeds ever measured on land - 231 mph.

You can read the transcript for the first ten minutes of the programme here.

El Niño

The weather phenomenon known as El Niño can cause dramatic effects around the world. Henry Fountain explains where it comes from.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and fill in the missing words in the transcript. The activity is suitable for intermediate 2 students.



The phenomenon called El Niño can (1) ... weather (2) ... around the world. In 1998 it caused devastating floods and (3) ... in California. Around the same time, it also caused these floods across the south. But it all started thousands of miles from either location.
Picture the equatorial Pacific. That’s South Asia / Australia on the left and South America on the right. Pacific (4) ...   ... normally blow from east to west, pushing warm surface water with them. The warm water evaporates, adding (5) ... to the air and bringing the annual Monsoons to the region.
In the Eastern Pacific, as the surface waters push westward, cold water (6) ... up from the deep to replace it. The cold water helps keep the air and the South America coast dry.
But sometimes the (7) ...   ... stop. Scientists don’t know precisely why, but when they do, the warm water moves back east. That’s when El Niño (8) ...   ...  . The pattern for rainfall is reversed. Australia and South Asia suffer (9) ... and coastal South America is hit by storms. But warm water in the Eastern Pacific causes other changes as well.
High atmosphere winds called jet streams circle the planet. El Niño can alter the (10) ... of those winds, driving Pacific storms to California. As the jet stream winds continue across the continent, they can keep the colder Arctic temperatures at (11) ...  . That can make for a warmer winter in the North East and North West. That’s why in 2010 when El Niño once again brought flooding to California, farther up the west coast in Vancouver the Winter Olympics were (12) ... by unusually warm weather. It was all thanks to El Niño.

Key:
1 disrupt 2 patterns 3 mudslides 4 trade winds 5 moisture 6 wells 7 trade winds 8 takes hold 9 drought 10 path 11 bay 12 hampered

Madrid Teacher: Horrible weather

In this week's Madrid Teacher video four teachers talk about horrible weather conditions they have witnesses. As usual, we'll be using their conversation as a springboard to go over some of the features of spoken English they use.

First of all, watch the video through to get the gist of what they are talking about.

Now watch the video more carefully paying attention to the following:

• Showing surprise and reacting to what you hear: Really?; Oh yeah; Wow; Oh, lord; OK, right, yeah
• Conversation fillers to gain thinking time: Well, you know, like
• Use of really,  pretty  and quite to emphasize the adjective
• Use of vague language: like an hour; and everything; like the sky opens
• Use of I mean to paraphrase what you have just said and make yourself clear.
• Use of actually to introduce a bit of surprising information
• Showing agreement: Yeah; Of course!; Exactly!

Now it's over to you. If possible, get together with a friend or relative and talk about any weather anecdotes you have gone through or heard about. Don't forget to use some of the features of spoken English we have revised in this post.

I was once in a, in a tornado.
Really?
On one side it demolished a church, and on the other side, it destroyed a . . . a truck stop. Then a little bit further on it, it just demolished a little town.
So it just went around you?
Well, no, it went, like, over me. It, it . . . you know these bounce sometimes
Oh yeah!
There was, this was a little tornado, it was small, but really destructive.
I’ve seen videos of that tornado bounce . . .
Yeah.
…that you’re talking about.
That type of, yeah. That, that can be pretty destructive…
That’s wild.
The interesting thing is that it crossed an entire city and only destroyed one church . . .
Wow.
In the whole city, but then - was it - at the edge of the city it destroyed a truck stop, and then went on to destroy . . .
Was it a wooden, a wooden church, or just a . . .
It was a wooden church, just like a big quonset hut, you know just a rounded building. So it’s just asking for problems.
Were you, were you personally frightened, or . . .
Yeah, because it . . . it was, it was frightening.
And was anybody injured?
Yeah, it killed people. It killed people in the truck stop, then it killed . . . it’s like, near a highway. And that was about . . . maybe a mile from me, half a mile to a mile.
Well, my, my most frightening weather experience was, I was skiing once and got to the top of the mountain and suddenly just went completely white, complete white-out. And it was like a snowstorm . . . couldn’t see anything, and started skiing down, stupidly, I mean, we should have just stayed. And suddenly, just like, not knowing exact…, not knowing where, where I was and, just like, it was, like, quite frightening because it was like an hour, just being stuck on the top of a mountain…
It’s risky, too. You never know if you’re going to ski off the edge of something, or . . .
It was snowing. . Couldn’t see a thing . . .  Yeah that’s why I stopped because you can’t even, you couldn’t even see where the ski run was, and it was… It was in Switzerland right on the top of a mountain. You know, when you’re in the mountains in Switzerland, you can, you can go on for six hundred kilometers and not see another house.
Wow! Were you really cold?
No, I was, I, I had some good, you know, some good clothing and everything.
That’s good.
It was just, like a snowstorm. It was just the thing of not being able to see where you were . . .
Of course!
…and just like snow everywhere .
But the encroaching freeze could really add to the fear.
Yeah. Well, there was that fear of, you know, you could get trapped up there at night…
Yeah, yeah.
…don’t get out.
Oh, lord.
So you’ve been . . .
Oh yeah, actually, I was, I was driving from the north of Spain into Madrid. And we were driving up the mountain and there was a little sign for a snowflake. And my father looked at me and said, “snow?” And I said, “of course, we’re in the mountains!” I was teasing . . . until a few went by the window, a few snowflakes, and I looked at him and he looked at me and we’re like, “are we really seeing this?” And then, boom – another whiteout, like you were talking about.
Just like mine, yeah?
…could not see anything. This was at the end of, like, and eighteen hour drive and I was determined to get to Madrid and stop. And we ended up just going for about two hours at about six kilometers an hour, driving by while lines of cars followed plows and skidding along the road yelling at each other: “stop! I’m doing this!” I had never seen weather like that in Spain.
That’s incredible. You don’t expect it here.
Exactly! I was totally unprepared. We were in a Peugeot.
I’m from a hot place so I haven’t got any snow stories, but . . . I, I used to live in Southeast Asia and there you have the most incredible monsoon rain. I mean, all day long you sit and you sweat. And it’s, and the heat builds up and builds up and builds up and then three o’clock in the afternoon it’s like the sky opens . . .
Wow!
And these rain, raindrops, I mean, huge raindrops . . . fifteen minutes of the heaviest rain you could possibly imagine, and then it stops.
And that’s every day?
Every day.
And it’s only fifteen minutes?
Usually fifteen minutes to twenty minutes, sometimes only five minutes. It’s like the sky just can’t hold any more water and it just, it just drops down.
Do you go, do people go out and like, you know, use it as a shower, because it’s so hot? Or no, everyone just stays inside?
It’s funny, everybody tries to stay out of it actually.
OK, right, yeah.
All the cars, all the motorbikes, everyone pulls off the road and tries to find shelter and . . .
Yeah. OK.

What Happens If Your Town Runs Out of Water?

In Lompico, California, residents are struggling with drought and water shortages are forcing locals to rethink the way they are using water.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video through and match each of the headings A-H with the corresponding resident 1-7. There is one extra heading you don't need to use.

The activity is suitable for intermediate 2 students.



A Dams everywhere.
B Less rainfall than expected one more year.
C More events of this kind because of dry vegetation.
D Not very many residents in these area.
E Reasons for optimism.
F Restrictions for domestic use on the horizon.
G Saving water.
H Water cycles are changing.
1 Lois Henry President, Lompico County Water District Board
2 Kevin Collins, Conservation Activist and Lompico Resident
3 Andrew Fisher, Hydrogeologist,  University of California, Santa Cruz
4 Lois Henry, President Lompico County Water District Board
5 Richard Rogers, Director of Operations San Lorenzo Valley Water District
6 John Stipes, Fire Chief Zayante Fire Protection District
7 Kevin Collins, Conservation Activist and Lompico Resident

1 Lois Henry President, Lompico County Water District Board
Mark Twain said, "Whiskey's for drinking and water is for fighting." We're going to have wars
over water one of these days because water is vital. Here in Lompico, we have about five-hundred
households. It's not really a town, it's just a canyon in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The only business is...
the Water District. It's just a bunch of homes that started off as a resort area. Our claim to fame here is
that Jerry Garcia lost part of a finger in Lompico Creek with an axe.
2 Kevin Collins, Conservation Activist and Lompico Resident
I measure rainfall. We got less than twenty inches this winter. The average here, long term average,
is 45-50 inches. This is a third year of a below average series of winters. So if the stream dries up
since my house is dependent on it for a water supply, I'll have to pay to have water trucked into a fire-
fighting storage tank that I have. The creek hasn't dried up in the 25 years I've lived here, but this is an
unprecedented rainfall year.
3 Andrew Fisher Hydrogeologist  University of California, Santa Cruz
We have clusters of dry years and clusters of wet years as well. There's an additional level of variability
you can now layer on top of all of that which has to do with climate change. One of the big areas of
the planet that's being affected is the hydrologic cycle. There are changes in the way air is moving and
the way water is moving. We see in the San Francisco Bay area, for example, in the last hundred years
there's been an increase in the intensity of storms. So what that means is during a given year, we're now
more likely to get a larger fraction of our rain during a smaller number of events. You tend to get more
run off with those big storms. The streams tend to peak and flood. They tend to deliver more of that
water to the ocean. There's less opportunity for that stream water or the water coming off of hill slopes
to soak into the ground and recharge aquifers.
4 Lois Henry, President Lompico County Water District Board
I've cut my water usage in half. Come on in. One of the things I did to conserve water was to buy a new washer. I collect water in a bucket while the water is heating up and then I bring the water in the house. And then I'll take some of it and heat it up in this teapot and I will take that hot water and wash my dishes. And then I take that water and I water my plants. California Department of Public Health contacted me and said it would be possible for us to get a grant for an emergency intertie with San Lorenzo Water District.
5 Richard Rogers Director of Operations San Lorenzo Valley Water District
They really squeaked by in these last couple of weeks. I mean it was a day away, I think, from trucking
water in. This pipe will climb up approximately 700 feet in elevation to get to the Lompico water
system. Because the state's in an unprecedented drought, we're all having water conservation. San
Lorenzo Valley water starts May 1st with a 20% mandatory restrictions. Lompico, they're in and out
right now, of rationing. When your neighbor knocks on your door and says you need water, you help.
6 John Stipes Fire Chief Zayante Fire Protection District
From maybe October through January there was probably 70 different vegetation fires that were lit in
the county this year, where typically we'd have maybe a dozen. These fuels out here, these grasses out
here, are probably twice as dry right now as they normally are this time of year.
7 Kevin Collins Conservation Activist and Lompico Resident
California's entire landscape has been modified over the last hundred years. It's been plumbed. Every
major river system in the entire state except for one on the Oregon border is dammed and there's a huge
network of aqueducts and gates and pumps that move water from one part of the state to the other.
The farmers are going to be screaming bloody murder this summer because their water allocation just
doesn't exist. And so there will be fights over what's going to happen in the Sacramento Delta. They'll
be accusing conservation advocates of putting them out of business because we don't want the salmon
to go extinct and other species that are blinking out in the delta. There's going to be a huge political
battle this summer in California over who gets what water that still exists.

Key:
1D 2B 3H 4G 5F 6C 7A

Extensive listening: Britain under water

 As Britain is battered yet again by extreme weather, reporter Richard Bilton investigates the causes of the flooding that has devastated so much of the country in the last winter.

He meets the families whose lives have been ruined and asks whether more could be done to protect our towns and villages. Or should the government now be making tough choices about which places to save?

The Weather Memory Bank

The Weather Memory Bank is a project by the Universities of Nottingham and Exeter, The Royal Metereological Society and The Rogal Geographical Society which investigates how people relate to and remember their local weather and particular weather events they have experienced throughout their lives.  It also intends to find out what or whom informs people's understanding of climate change.

Different experiences and memories are central to the way in which information on long-term climate change, and short-lived weather events, is gathered and transmitted across generations.

23 different people answer the questions below in short videos. As members of the public are interviewed, the difficulty varies, but most of the videos are suitable for advanced students. However, intermediate students can have a go at them and read the close-captions if necessary.

The videos are a good springboard to discuss our attitude to the weather and climate change, and we ourselves can answer the questions to talk about this topic, either in class or with the members of our talking group.

Q1 How would you describe the weather where you live?
Q2 In what ways does the weather affect your everyday life?
Q3 Are there any times in your life associated with particular types of weather?
Q4 Can you recall periods of unusual or extreme weather?
Q5 Have you lived or spent time in different places that you associate with different types of weather?
Q6 What evidence have you seen yourself to suggest that climate might be changing?
Q7 From where/what sources have you gained information about weather and climate change?
Q8 Who would you trust for information about climate/climate change?
Q9 What should we be doing/What are you doing about climate change?
Q10 What should people watching this interview do next?

Climbing sequoia trees to help mankind

Watch this New York Times video clip in which David Milarch tells us about his plan to use sequoias to deal with one of the most serious problems mankind is facing these days.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.



1 Sequoias may be the answer to fight climate change.
2 The workers are on a forest 18 miles south east of Fresno California.
3 The climbers feels sorry for the people who work in an office.
4 The higher the climbers get, the more quality the branches are.
5 They plan to grow three million sequoia trees in a year.

You can check the answers below and read the transcript here.

Giant sequoias  whisk in and breathe in CO2, faster, more effectively and start quicker than almost any species of tree on earth, and they might be just the answer that we were looking for, they really make a run at and help reverse climate change.
All clear...
We are here near the top of the Sierra of Nevada Range, 80 miles south east of Fresno California, we are on a private land. It’s an intact giant sequoia forest.
We got it over something, but it’s something we don’t want.
That branch, the branch they have been shooting for is taller than any tree on the east coast of the United States.
That’s a lower branch.
This is just an amazing project. We’re working with David Milarch, we’re out here getting some cuttings from some of the world’s largest giant sequoia trees, you know, just climbing in an amazing beautiful place that very few people have visited.
Archangel Ancient Trees is locating, propagating the largest oldest living things on earth, which of course is trees.
I’m guessing it’s over 250ft tall, and we will try to get to the top, we’re not trying to shoot our initial shot to the top.
This is the hardest part for the climbers, trying to get the fish line set over a branch which is safe.
We started out by going checking out some of these lower limbs. We are out here in sun to see if we can find some good cuttings.
This is the very top, near the echelon of big tree climbing in the world.
I feel bad for the people who have to go to an office, sit at the same desk every day, shuffle around the same papers, you know, this is the thing, this is our office out here, in the trees, every tree is different, you know, every day I different, every job is different.
Ok, just a regular walk in the park, going up, rising up to get a lot of small dough fir around us.
Look at the size of these lateral limbs, four five feet in diameter. This is just amazing.
They have an entire genetic history in their DNA. Over 4,000 years, uninterrupted change. What we need to do is build super growths. 5 acres to 5,000 acres of these growths of trees that do nothing more than offset thousands, in some cases, millions of tones of excess CO2.
Oh, here’s some. Look at that, right there. Stay clear! In coming!
The higher you go on these trees, two hundred feet to three hundred feet, the material just keeps getting better and better because there are different hormones in this material than in the lower branches. If this was a parallel to a male, I would say this is an eighty year old. Some of this stuff is fifty year old.
We gather about 700 cuttings from the Stagg as well as the waterfall giant sequoia, which are two of the healthiest largest sequoias on the planet. They are the champions of champions. We’re going to take those back for a propagation lab and we’re going to take those 750 cuttings of each of these trees, we’re going to turn them into a million trees in about a year for global reforestation every single year.
We would like to pick a dozen countries, give those countries the clones of these trees that we just did as models of carbon sequestering growths of super-trees, country by country, continent by continent. Really make a sincere run at reversing this nemesis that we all face called climate change.

Key:
1T 2F 3T 4T 5F

Tornadoes -video activity

This is a short video on tornadoes published by The New York Times as a follow-up to the catastrophe in Moore on 20 May.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below about it.

The activity is suitable for Intermediate students.



1 How fast were the winds in Moore?
2 Which factor plays a big part in measuring how devastating a tornado will be?
3 What's the main difference between a tornado and a hurricane?
4 What does '15 minutes' refer to?
5 What key ingredient in the atmosphere do tornadoes require?

To check your answers you can read the transcript below.

This is Henry Fountain for the New York Times. There’s still a lot scientists don’t know about tornadoes. But here’s some of what they do know.
The tornado in Moore was rated a 5 at the top of the enhanced Fujita scale. The tornado was initially rated a 4, but analysts determined that the damage to homes, commercial buildings and trees was caused by wind speeds over 200 miles an hour, making it a category 5. 
Factors like population density play a role on how deadly a tornado will become. The last time we saw a category 5 tornado was in 2011. It tore through the city of Joplin in Missouri and killed over 150 people.
While scientists are able to predict with some precision the track and timing of a hurricane, tornadoes cover a smaller area and can appear in a matter of minutes. That can give little warning for residents to find appropriate shelter. On Monday, residents of Moore Oklahoma were told that severe weather was coming, but they didn’t get an actual tornado warning until 15 minutes before it hit.
While the tornado in Moore was deadly, it comes in the middle of the tornado season that until now had been relatively quiet.
Warm moist air is a key ingredient in cooking up a tornado. But earlier this year the high altitude winds of the jet stream brought cold air to the Mid West, keeping warmer air out. It’s the same wind pattern that made for a cold in the North East. Now as temperatures continue to rise across the country, there’s no way to know whether the Mid West has seen the worst of extreme weather.

Extensive listening: Allan Savory, How to green the desert and reverse climate change

In this February 2013 in a  TED Talk Allan Savory set out his ideas about dessertification, an environmental problem affecting two thirds of the world's grasslands, and which accelarates climate change and causes traditional societies to descend into social chaos.

In the 1960s, while working in Africa on the interrelated problems of increasing poverty and disappearing wildlife, Savory made a significant breakthrough in understanding the degradation and desertification of grassland ecosystems. After decades of study and collaboration, thousands of managers of land, livestock and wildlife on five continents today follow the methodology he calls "Holistic Management."



Other TED Talks that touch on the topic "Learning from failure", as announced on the TED Blog by  Kate Torgovnick  in early March this year are:


Richard St. John: “Success is a continuous journey”
Kathryn Schulz: Don’t regret regret
JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure
Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex
Diana Laufenberg: How to learn from mistakes
Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong
Michael Litt: Why you need to fail to have a good career