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Fewer than a hundred yards from the South Pole, upwind from the ice runway where the ski plane lands and keeps its engines running to prevent the metal parts from freeze-locking together, scientists monitor the air several times every day to chart the course of that inexorable change.
在離南極不到幾百碼的冰雪跑道的逆風處—雪上飛機在這里著陸以使發動機保持轉動，從而防止金屬部件凍鎖在一起。科學家們每天都要對天空監測數次，以便繪制出有關這種不可抗拒的變化過程的圖表。
During my visit, I watched one scientist draw the results of that day's measurements, pushing the end of a steep line still higher on the graph.
在我訪問期間，我觀看了一位科學家繪出的當天測量的結果。他把圖表上的一條陡直向上的線的末端又向上推進一步。
He told me how easy it is-there at the end of the earth-to see that this enormous change in the global atmosphere is still picking up speed.
他告訴我—在地球的盡頭這里—很容易看到地球大氣層的巨大變化的速度仍在加快。
Two and a half years later I slept under the midnight sun at the other end of our planet, in a small tent pitched on a twelve-foot-thick slab of ice floating in the frigid 2 Arctic Ocean.
兩年半后，在我們星球的另一端，我在午夜的陽光下睡在一個搭在嚴寒的北冰洋上的一塊12 英寸厚的浮冰上的小帳蓬里。
After a hearty breakfast, my companions and I traveled by snowmobiles a few miles farther north to a rendezvous point where the ice was thinner -only three and a half feet thick-and a nuclear submarine hovered in the water below.
在吃了一頓豐盛的早餐后，我和同伴們乘雪上汽車又向北走了幾英里來到一個約定地點，這里的冰比較薄—只有3.5英尺厚，一艘核潛艇在冰下的水中守候。
After it crashed through the ice, took on its new passengers, and resubmerged, I talked with scientists who were trying to measure more accurately the thickness of the polar ice cap, which many believe is thinning as a result of global warming.
在它破冰而出裝載新乘客并且又重新潛人水中后，我開始與科學家們交談。他們力求更精確地測量地極冰帽的厚度，因為許多科學家認為，由于地球轉暖，地極冰帽正在變薄。
I had just negotiated an agreement between ice scientists and the U. S. Navy to secure the release of previously top secret data from submarine sonar tracks, data that could help them learn what is happening to the north polar cap.
我剛剛通過談判使研究冰雪的科學家同美國海軍之間達成一項協議，確保從潛艇聲納音軌獲得的以前屬于絕密的數據資料得以公布，這些資料能夠幫助科學家們了解北極冰帽正在發生的情況。
