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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.
在离南极不到几百码的冰雪跑道的逆风处—雪上飞机在这里着陆以使发动机保持转动，从而防止金属部件冻锁在一起。科学家们每天都要对天空监测数次，以便绘制出有关这种不可抗拒的变化过程的图表。
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.
在我访问期间，我观看了一位科学家绘出的当天测量的结果。他把图表上的一条陡直向上的线的末端又向上推进一步。
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.
他告诉我—在地球的尽头这里—很容易看到地球大气层的巨大变化的速度仍在加快。
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.
两年半后，在我们星球的另一端，我在午夜的阳光下睡在一个搭在严寒的北冰洋上的一块12 英寸厚的浮冰上的小帐蓬里。
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.
在吃了一顿丰盛的早餐后，我和同伴们乘雪上汽车又向北走了几英里来到一个约定地点，这里的冰比较薄—只有3.5英尺厚，一艘核潜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.
在它破冰而出装载新乘客并且又重新潜人水中后，我开始与科学家们交谈。他们力求更精确地测量地极冰帽的厚度，因为许多科学家认为，由于地球转暖，地极冰帽正在变薄。
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.
我刚刚通过谈判使研究冰雪的科学家同美国海军之间达成一项协议，确保从潜艇声纳音轨获得的以前属于绝密的数据资料得以公布，这些资料能够帮助科学家们了解北极冰帽正在发生的情况。
