Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.
For generations of explorers, the cold Himalayan valleys, with their glaciers stretching for kilometers, seemed to symbolize a kind of cold, brutal permanence. But now that was changed.
After hiking through zero-visibility conditions and atrocious (极其恶劣的) weather for five days, veteran explorer Ian McNaught-Davis came out in a village surrounded by 1 scenery. But, he was also 2 with a shocking truth: The glaciers in Qomolangma were melting very quickly.
In Europe’s Alps, mountaineers report that rock pillars that were held on to their crags (悬崖，峭壁) by ice for thousands of years are simply 3 away as the ice melts. Glaciers in the African peaks of Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya are also 4 rapidly, and the same is happening in the South American Andes.
Scientists believe global warming could be to blame. This is the first time the scientists have suggested such a link. This 5 has been repeated in all the world’s coldest places.
Antarctica has been the scene of huge 6 of ice shelves. In the Arctic, 7 melting around the North Pole has led to a suggestion that soon shipping will be able to 8 the North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Intergovernmental Conference on Climate Change has already established that the 9 temperature on Earth rose by 0.6 degrees Centigrade in the 20th century. They predict that by 2100 it will be between 1.4 degrees and 5.8 degrees warmer than it was in 1990. The sea could rise 10 from 9 centimetres to as high as 88 centimetres.
A. investigate I. pattern
B. everywhere J. navigate
C. average K. damages
D. confronted L. reasonable
E. anywhere M. crumbling
F. seasonal N. collapses
G. receding O. Conceding
H. breathtaking Directions:Answer Sheet 2