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Increased global rainfall may scour pollution from atmosphere, study predicts.
编者注：scour：从标题中的 “get cleaner” 和副题中的 “pollution” 可以推测scour大意：减少（大气污染）。
If you scour something such as a sink, floor, or pan, you clean its surface by rubbing it hard with something rough. 冲刷。
[1] There may be a bright side to global warming, at least in the Arctic — the changing climate could improve air quality in the polar region, a new study shows.
[2] The find is rare good news for the Arctic, which most studies find is warming much more rapidly than the rest of the planet.
编者注：这项研究结果对北极来说是少有的好消息。因为大多数的研究显示北极较地球其它地区变暖的速度快得多。
[3] Currently, air pollutants generally travel from industrially developed regions in the south northward to the Arctic, where pollution contributes to heating up the polar climate.
编者注：pollutant：污染物。联想大纲词汇pollution，污染。
[4] The reason for the potential boost in air quality is increased global rainfall, which many climate models predict will be a widespread result of global warming, said study leader Timothy Garrett, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah.
[5] “Precipitation is the atmosphere's single most efficient way of removing particulate pollution,” Garrett said. That's because raindrops simply take the pollutants with them as they fall from the atmosphere — the mechanism behind acid rain.
编者注：precipitation：生词，但不影响阅读：整个句子就是在解释precipitation的意思。
mechanism：在标点符号 “—” 之后出现，不影响阅读。是对“雨滴降落时将大气中的污染物也带下来”的补充说明。这里的意思为 (产生自然现象的)物理过程。
[6] Thus, pollution may be already scrubbed from the air in other regions before it even reaches the Arctic.
编者注：scrub：同义替换副标题中的scour。
Less Soot = Less Warming?
[7] To verify that rainfall can remove pollutants before they reach the Arctic, Garrett's team examined a decade's worth of air-quality records from Barrow, Alaska, and Alert in Nunavut, Canada — the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world.
编者注：verify：If you verify something, you check that it is true by careful examination or investigation.
标点符号 “—” 后面又有很多大词，明白这个标点的作用，就可以放心地跳读了。
[8] The team compared levels of carbon monoxide — a pollutant not removed by rainfall — with those of sulfates and soot, which are scoured out of the atmosphere by rain. The results showed that the sulfur and soot levels were lower than expected, leading the team to conclude that rainfall is already cleaning the Arctic air.
编者注：sulfate和soot，都是生词，但紧跟的which…补充说明，所以不影响阅读。
[9] This effect may also partially counteract Arctic warming, Garrett noted.
[10] That's because air pollutants, particularly soot, increase the greenhouse effect that's the hallmark of global warming.
[11] “When [sulfates] reach the Arctic, they change the clouds in such a way that the clouds act like ... blankets [over] the Arctic surface,” Garrett said. “This helps insulate the Arctic and accelerate warming.”
[12] In addition, soot darkens the snow when it eventually falls out of the Arctic air. That causes the snow to absorb more sunlight, also producing a warming effect.
[13] So if more pollution is cleansed from the air before it reaches the Arctic, that might help reduce the rate of climate change in the far north, said Garrett, whose study was published online in August in Geophysical Research Letters.
[14] “Of course this is speculative,” he said. “But it is reasonable speculation based on the results we have found.”
编者注：段落7-14 ，Garret及其团队研究若干地球最北端人类居住地的空气样本，发现降雨减少了soot和sulfate在空气中含量，而这两种物质会加速温室效应（气温变暖），因此
Rainfall Not a Major Player?
[15] Other scientists are impressed but cautious.
[16] “I think this is an important finding that builds on years of speculation about how removal processes in the atmosphere impact long-range transport of pollution,” Joseph McConnell, a snow hydrologist and environmental scientist at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, said by email.
[17] But Richard Alley, a geoscientist at Pennsylvania State University, cautioned that soot is probably a relatively minor contributor to Arctic warming.
[18] Also, he said by email, global warming will produce notably cleaner Arctic air only if increased rainfall comes in the form of more frequent storms and thus precipitation, rather than larger storms that simply “superclean” already cleansed air.
[19] McConnell added that the warming-related drop in Arctic soot levels may not have that much of an impact, since other factors are already reducing soot, such as government legislation.
[20] “The U.S. Clean Air Act and similar legislation in other countries very significantly reduced emissions of a lot of pollutants during the past 40 years,” he said.
全球变暖导致地球降雨增加 (Para. 4)，降雨能减少soot和sulfate在北极空气中的含量 (Para. 5, 8)，而soot和sulfate加速（北极）气温变暖 (Para. 10, 11)，所以才有了这样的文章标题。
另外，文章中多次出现了标点符号“—”，多读几遍，体会一下它的作用。
编者注：scour：从标题中的 “get cleaner” 和副题中的 “pollution” 可以推测scour大意：减少（大气污染）。
If you scour something such as a sink, floor, or pan, you clean its surface by rubbing it hard with something rough. 冲刷。
[1] There may be a bright side to global warming, at least in the Arctic — the changing climate could improve air quality in the polar region, a new study shows.
[2] The find is rare good news for the Arctic, which most studies find is warming much more rapidly than the rest of the planet.
编者注：这项研究结果对北极来说是少有的好消息。因为大多数的研究显示北极较地球其它地区变暖的速度快得多。
[3] Currently, air pollutants generally travel from industrially developed regions in the south northward to the Arctic, where pollution contributes to heating up the polar climate.
编者注：pollutant：污染物。联想大纲词汇pollution，污染。
[4] The reason for the potential boost in air quality is increased global rainfall, which many climate models predict will be a widespread result of global warming, said study leader Timothy Garrett, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah.
[5] “Precipitation is the atmosphere's single most efficient way of removing particulate pollution,” Garrett said. That's because raindrops simply take the pollutants with them as they fall from the atmosphere — the mechanism behind acid rain.
编者注：precipitation：生词，但不影响阅读：整个句子就是在解释precipitation的意思。
mechanism：在标点符号 “—” 之后出现，不影响阅读。是对“雨滴降落时将大气中的污染物也带下来”的补充说明。这里的意思为 (产生自然现象的)物理过程。
[6] Thus, pollution may be already scrubbed from the air in other regions before it even reaches the Arctic.
编者注：scrub：同义替换副标题中的scour。
Less Soot = Less Warming?
[7] To verify that rainfall can remove pollutants before they reach the Arctic, Garrett's team examined a decade's worth of air-quality records from Barrow, Alaska, and Alert in Nunavut, Canada — the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world.
编者注：verify：If you verify something, you check that it is true by careful examination or investigation.
标点符号 “—” 后面又有很多大词，明白这个标点的作用，就可以放心地跳读了。
[8] The team compared levels of carbon monoxide — a pollutant not removed by rainfall — with those of sulfates and soot, which are scoured out of the atmosphere by rain. The results showed that the sulfur and soot levels were lower than expected, leading the team to conclude that rainfall is already cleaning the Arctic air.
编者注：sulfate和soot，都是生词，但紧跟的which…补充说明，所以不影响阅读。
[9] This effect may also partially counteract Arctic warming, Garrett noted.
[10] That's because air pollutants, particularly soot, increase the greenhouse effect that's the hallmark of global warming.
[11] “When [sulfates] reach the Arctic, they change the clouds in such a way that the clouds act like ... blankets [over] the Arctic surface,” Garrett said. “This helps insulate the Arctic and accelerate warming.”
[12] In addition, soot darkens the snow when it eventually falls out of the Arctic air. That causes the snow to absorb more sunlight, also producing a warming effect.
[13] So if more pollution is cleansed from the air before it reaches the Arctic, that might help reduce the rate of climate change in the far north, said Garrett, whose study was published online in August in Geophysical Research Letters.
[14] “Of course this is speculative,” he said. “But it is reasonable speculation based on the results we have found.”
编者注：段落7-14 ，Garret及其团队研究若干地球最北端人类居住地的空气样本，发现降雨减少了soot和sulfate在空气中含量，而这两种物质会加速温室效应（气温变暖），因此
Rainfall Not a Major Player?
[15] Other scientists are impressed but cautious.
[16] “I think this is an important finding that builds on years of speculation about how removal processes in the atmosphere impact long-range transport of pollution,” Joseph McConnell, a snow hydrologist and environmental scientist at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, said by email.
[17] But Richard Alley, a geoscientist at Pennsylvania State University, cautioned that soot is probably a relatively minor contributor to Arctic warming.
[18] Also, he said by email, global warming will produce notably cleaner Arctic air only if increased rainfall comes in the form of more frequent storms and thus precipitation, rather than larger storms that simply “superclean” already cleansed air.
[19] McConnell added that the warming-related drop in Arctic soot levels may not have that much of an impact, since other factors are already reducing soot, such as government legislation.
[20] “The U.S. Clean Air Act and similar legislation in other countries very significantly reduced emissions of a lot of pollutants during the past 40 years,” he said.
全球变暖导致地球降雨增加 (Para. 4)，降雨能减少soot和sulfate在北极空气中的含量 (Para. 5, 8)，而soot和sulfate加速（北极）气温变暖 (Para. 10, 11)，所以才有了这样的文章标题。
另外，文章中多次出现了标点符号“—”，多读几遍，体会一下它的作用。