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Climate change in the Arctic 北极气候变化 Beating a retreat 仓惶撤退 Arctic sea ice is melting far faster than climatemodels predict. Why? 北极海冰正在以比气候模型所预测的快得多的速度融化，为什么? ON SEPTEMBER 9th, at the height of its summertime shrinkage, ice covered 4.33m squarekm, or 1.67m square miles, of the Arctic Ocean, according to America s National Snow andIce Data Centre. 据美国国家冰雪中心监测，今年的9月9日，处于夏季收缩极值的北极海冰仅仅覆盖了433万平方公里，或相当于167万平方英里的北冰洋洋面。 That is not a record lownot quite. 这虽未创下最低记录，但也已相去不远。 But the actual record, 4.17m squarekm in 2007, was the product of an unusual combination of sunny days, cloudless skies andwarm currents flowing up from mid-latitudes. 2007年的417万平方公里的最低记录是受到当时艳阳高照，万里无云的天空以及从中纬度上来的暖流这种异常组合的影响的产物。 This year has seen no such opposite of a perfect storm, yet the summer sea-ice minimum is amere 4% bigger than that record. 而尽管并没有观测到如此不利的情况，今年海冰的极小值也仅仅比那年的记录大了4%。 | 
