喜马拉雅冰川发现工业革命污染物

Pollutants from the Industrial Revolution Found in Himalayan Glaciers

Near the end of the 18th century, the industrial revolution began to transform Great Britain. Machines replaced hand tools, factories sprouted up in cities and towns, and a sharp uptick in coal combustion polluted the skies. The industrial revolution, and the pollution that followed in its wake, soon spread to the rest of Europe.

18世纪末,工业革命开始改变英国。机器取代了手工工具,工厂在城镇里涌现,煤炭燃烧量急剧增加，导致严重空气污染。工业革命和随之而来的污染很快蔓延到欧洲其他地区。

But some of the smoke and ash didn't stay there. It also drifted into the upper atmosphere and was blown by winter winds all the way to the frigid Himalayas. “This ash was transported for thousands of kilometers. And eventually, it was deposited with the snowflakes,” said scientist Paolo Gabrielli of the Ohio State University.

但有些污染并没有停留在欧洲。它们还飘到了上层大气,之后被冬风一路吹到寒冷的喜马拉雅。“这些灰尘被运送了数千公里。最后和雪花一起沉积。”俄亥俄州立大学的环境科学家保罗·加布里埃尔说到。

His team found signatures of airborne pollution from the beginning of the industrial revolution in Tibet-specifically, in ice cores taken from a glacier nearly 24,000 feet above sea level on Mount Shisha Pangma. Such ice cores are like time capsules that contain a record of the contaminants that were mixed in with each year's snowfall. “And we are able to count annual layers from the surface down to a depth, in this case, of even more than 500 years, covering a time period between the year 1500 A. D. to 1992. At the

beginning of our record, we didn't observe any kind of anthropogenic contribution in our ice.”

保罗·加布里埃尔的团队在西藏发现了工业革命初期的空气污染。他们在希夏邦马峰上一个海拔近2.4万英尺冰川采集的冰芯中发现了污染。这种冰芯就像时间胶囊,里面记录着每年降雪时混入的污染物。“我们能够计算从地表到深处的年层数,在这种情况下,年层可能超过500年,在公元1500年到1992年之间。在记录初期,我们并未在冰层中观察到任何人类活动的影响。”

And this lasted until about the year 1780. At that time, we start to observe an enrichment of some trace metals. These metals included zinc, chromium, nickel and cadmium. The industrial revolution also coincided with a rapidly growing global population. The increased demand for food led to the expansion of croplands.

这种情况一直持续到1780年。那时,人类开始观察到一些微量金属的聚集。这些金属包括锌、铬、镍和镉。工业革命期间,全球人口也在迅速增长。对粮食的需求增长也导致了农田的扩张。

Gabrielli thinks that the practice of burning forests to clear land for agriculture may have also contributed to the trace metals found in the ice cores. The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

加布里埃尔认为,燃烧森林以开垦农田的做法也可能是冰芯中发现微量金属的原因

之一。这项研究发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上。

This finding is not the first time ice cores have revealed signs of human pollution from the past. A previous study showed that a glacier in the Andes Mountains of South America bore traces of toxic elements like lead and arsenic, deposited during colonial silver mining operations in the 16th century, more than 200 years before the industrial revolution. 

这并不是冰芯第一次揭示人类污染的迹象。此前的一项研究表明,南美洲安第斯山脉的一座冰川中有铅和砷等有毒元素,这些元素在16世纪殖民地银矿开采作业期间沉积,比工业革命早了200多年。

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