了解今日课堂：

屋顶融化、道路开裂：

中国多地遭遇极端高温天气

Dangerous Heat Wave Strikes China

第一段:

As dozens of cities in eastern and southern China issued heat alerts on Tuesday, with some temperature forecasts exceeding 104 degrees over the next 24 hours, health workers conducted outdoor coronavirus tests with packets of frozen snacks strapped to their white hazmat suits. Roofs melted, roads cracked and some residents sought relief in underground air-raid shelters.

The heat wave is forecast to persist for at least two weeks.

The scorching heat reflects a global trend of increasingly frequent episodes of extreme weather driven by climate change. In June, weeks of heat waves plagued northern China, at the same time floods displaced millions of people in the central and southwestern parts of the country.

A museum in Chongqing displaying imperial relics from the Palace Museum closed for repairs after sections of its tiled roof melted, according to a notice on Monday. In a town in southern Jiangxi Province, state TV showed a heat-damaged section of a road arched up at least six inches, according to news service.

第二段

Residents of the city of Nanjing rested on socially distant chairs in underground shelters that have been open to the public since Sunday. At the Chengdu Zoo and the Shanghai Zoo, animals were given slices of watermelon and bite-size ice treats.

The unrelenting heat also coincides with rounds of mandatory P.C.R. testing across the country, including in Shanghai, as the authorities there seek to curb the rapid spread of the Omicron variant and its subvariants.

Health workers, stuck in full protective gear for long hours, resorted to creative ways to keep cool.

A photograph posted on social media showed health workers from the Suixi County Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine tying frozen desserts to the hoods of their hazmat suits as residents lined up for coronavirus tests. A video showed a Shanghai health care worker releasing pools of sweat that had collected in the suit's foot covering.

Another video showed a health worker in Henan succumbing to heat stroke, panting on the ground as his colleagues fanned him with packaging from test kits.

多地遭遇洪涝和高温，极端天气侵袭中国

Extreme Weather Hits China With Massive Floods and Scorching Heat

第三段”

China is grappling with extreme weather emergencies across the country, with the worst flooding in decades submerging houses and cars in the south and record-high heat waves in the northern and central provinces causing roads to buckle.

Water levels in more than a hundred rivers across the country have surged beyond flood warning levels, according to the People's Daily. The authorities in Guangdong Province on Tuesday raised alerts to the highest level after days of rainfall and floods, closing schools, businesses and public transport in affected areas.

The flooding has disrupted the lives of almost half a million people in southern China. Footage on state media showed rescue crews on boats paddling across waterlogged roads to relieve trapped residents. In Shaoguan, a manufacturing hub, factories were ordered to halt production, as water levels have reached a 50-year high, state television reported.

China has been grappling with summertime floods for centuries but floods this year have also coincided with heat waves that struck the northern part of the country, where the heavy rain is also expected to move in the coming days, according to the Central Meteorological Observatory.

第四段

The scorching heat in some of China's most populous provinces has driven up the demand for air conditioning, fueling record electricity usage. In Shandong, a province in northeastern China with a population of 100 million, the maximum electricity load reached a record 92.94 million kilowatts on Tuesday, overtaking the 2020 high of 90.22 million kilowatts, state television said.

The two-pronged weather emergency that China is experiencing reflects a global trend of increasingly frequent and lengthy episodes of extreme weather driven by climate change.

China introduced a carbon market last July to curb emissions and has over the past two decades nearly quintupled the acreage of green space in its cities.

But significant environmental damage has already been done. The devastation and disruptions resulting from greenhouse gases that have already been emitted are likely to continue in the coming years.