For most of human history, the world above 66 degrees latitude has remained largely out of play for large-scale commerce. Explorers, speculators, and scientists long believed rich resources and shipping routes lay hidden beneath the Arctic's ice and snow, but the true nature of its wealth was obscured by the same deadly cold, debilitating darkness, and enormous distances that blocked its exploitation.
在人類歷史的大部分時間，緯度66度以上的世界是被大規模的商業活動排除在外的。探險家、投機者、科學家一直相信北極深厚的冰層和雪地里藏著豐富的資源和航線，但這些財富都被死寂一般的寒冷和黑暗隱藏了，遙遠的距離進一步阻攔了對它的開發。
Today the Arctic landscape is greener than you are probably comfortable imagining, with fewer caribou and reindeer, more mosquitoes, warmer summers. The most visible and disturbing change has come at sea, where summer sea ice -- the floating expanse that covers much of the Arctic Ocean during the region's brief thaw -- has been disappearing at an astonishing rate.
現在北極比你想象的要更綠一些，只是馴鹿的數量在減少，蚊子增多，夏天溫度更高。最明顯的影響也最大的變化發生在海上，夏季海上的冰塊--曾經即使在短暫的解凍期，它們也會覆蓋住幾乎整個北冰洋，正在以令人恐慌的速度消失。
While this floating sheet always shrinks in warm months and grows again with the return of the cold, the scale of ice loss has been unprecedented, and some researchers believe it's speeding up. NASA scientists estimate that on average the Arctic loses nearly 21,000 square miles of ice each year, and the experts who prepared the 2014 National Climate Assessment predict the Arctic Ocean will be ice free in summer before 2050.
這個冰蓋的面積在稍暖的月份會變小，天氣變冷的時候會再變大，消失的冰塊的面積變得前所未有的大，而一些研究人員認為這個數據還會上漲。美國航天局的科學家預測每年北冰洋平均減少的冰塊面積達近21000平方英里，2014年國際氣候評估會議上的專家預測2050年的夏天到來之前北冰洋上的冰塊將會全部消失。
"It's all happening much faster than anyone thought," said Michael Sfraga, director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. "There's an ocean opening before us in real time."
華盛頓威爾遜中心基地研究所主任邁克爾·斯弗拉加表示：“這一切發生的比任何人想象的還要快。我們面前馬上就要出現一片汪洋大海。”
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