Looking Into the Depths To Grasp Climate Change
探究深海以了解氣候變遷
By Justin Gillis

Recently, 480 kilometers off the coast of New Zealand, scientists aboard the research vessel Tangaroa gently lowered two funky-looking orange orbs into the sea. Soon they disappeared, plunging of their own accord toward the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
最近，在紐西蘭外海480公里處的海面上，「坦加勞號」研究船上的科學家往海面輕輕放下兩個外形古怪的橙色球狀物。它們很快就下沉，直探太平洋深處。

They were prototypes, specialized robots designed to record temperature and other conditions all the way to the sea bottom, more than five kilometers down. Every few days since that June voyage, they have been surfacing, beaming their data to a satellite, then diving again.
它們是特製原型機器人，主要用於記錄水面下的溫度與其他狀態，一路直達深逾五千公尺的海底。六月的此次航行之後，它們每隔幾天就浮出水面，把蒐集的資料傳給衛星，然後再度下潛。

With luck, a fleet of hundreds like them will be prowling the ocean in a few years, and the great veil of human ignorance will lift a bit further.
如果一切順利，幾年後會有數百個類似機器人同時探測大海深處。屆時，人類的無知面紗就會進一步揭開。

In 2014, more is known about the surface of Mars than about the depths of the ocean – a handicap to scientists trying to understand how human activity is changing the planet.
2014年，人類對火星表面的所知多於海洋深處。對試圖瞭解人類活動如何改變地球的科學家而言，這是重大障礙。

The warming of the earth’s surface has slowed sharply over recent years. That slowdown did not match past computer projections of what the climate was supposed to do under the influence of greenhouse gases, and scientists have been struggling to explain it.
地球表面的暖化速度近年已大幅減緩。這與溫室氣體影響下的電腦預估氣候變化不符；科學家不知如何解釋。

The natural variability of climate could be playing a big role. Another possibility is that the rapid rise of coal burning in China has temporarily slowed planetary warming. Coal releases greenhouse gases that will have a long-term warming effect, of course, but it also throws particles into the air that can reflect sunlight back to space over the short term.
氣候的自然變化可能扮演重要角色。另一種可能是，中國大陸燃煤量迅速增加暫時使全球暖化速度減緩了。燃煤釋出溫室氣體會產生長期暖化效應。然而短期而言，它向空中釋出的粒子也會把陽光反射到太空中。

Some scientists think the deep ocean is playing a significant role, absorbing heat that would otherwise be showing up at the surface. And the available evidence suggests this is the case, but measurements of the deep ocean are scant.
有些科學家認為，深深的海洋扮演著重要的角色：因為它吸收了原本會出現在地表的熱氣。現有的證據顯示，這是事實，然而海洋的量測資料仍然極為稀少。

That is where the prototype robotic floats, developed at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, come in.
加州史克里普斯海洋學研究所設計這種原型浮標機器人，就是要解決這個問題。

The idea is to supplement the older robots that are already prowling the ocean. That system, known as Argo, goes only about two kilometers deep, so it miss the bottom half of the sea.
其構想是，彌補已在海洋各處探測的較舊型機器人之不足。名為Argo的舊系統大約只能下潛兩千公尺，未能及於海洋的下面一半。

Developing robots able to go deeper has been a technical challenge, but scientists think they are about to solve it, permitting temperature measurements of virtually the entire ocean – an achievement for science.
研發可以下潛至更深處的機器人，在技術上是個挑戰。不過科學家認為，他們即將解決這個難題，使他們得以測量整個海洋的溫度，這是科學上的一大成就。

Surface warming has always proceeded in fits and starts, with the longest hiatus lasting roughly 30 years, from the 1940s to the 1970s.
地表暖化始終間歇進行，最長的停頓時間大約持續30年，從1940年代至1970年代。

Daniel P. Schrag, a geochemist and head of Harvard’s Center for the Environment, said the inability of scientists to explain these ups and downs highlighted a deeper problem.
哈佛大學環境中心主任席拉格是地球化學家。他說，科學家無法解釋這些起伏變化，凸顯一個層次更深的問題。

At a time when people are causing profound changes on the planet, he said, governments had failed to invest enough in monitoring systems like satellites, causing gaping holes in the information that scientists have to work with. Even though they have the big picture right, they’re struggling to predict shifts that matter in the near term.
他說，在人類造成地球的巨大變化之際，各國政府並未對包括衛星在內的各種監控系統挹注足夠的資金，結果衍生科學家必須面對並設法填補的相關資料缺口。科學家雖然掌握了正確的全貌，預測極為重要的短期變化卻仍然十分吃力。

“I think the most likely thing is that we’re going to see a rapid warming in the next five or 10 years,” Dr. Schrag said, “and we still won’t know why.”
席拉格說博士說 ：「我認為，最可能的狀況是，未來5到10年我們將目睹暖化加快速度，而我們還不知道原因何在。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/science/in-the-ocean-clues-to-change.html

2014-09-02聯合報/G5版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 陳世欽譯 原文參見紐時週報十版下