Books & arts
文艺板块
Book review
书评
Winter weather
冬季的天气
The white stuff
白色的物质
Snow. By Anthony Wood.
《雪》。作者：安东尼·伍德
Anthony wood remembers sitting in the classroom one snowy morning as his teacher eyed the “saucer-size flakes” swirling outside the window. “Please boys and girls”, she implored, “pray that it stops snowing.” How little she grasped the mind of children, Mr Wood observes: “We were praying, alright—praying that it would snow until June.”
安东尼·伍德还记得，在一个下雪的清晨，他坐在教室里，他的老师则看着窗外盘旋的“碟子大小的雪花”。她恳求道，“孩子们，请祈祷大雪停下来吧。”老师对孩子们的想法把握的太少了，伍德说：“我们其实是在祈祷雪能下到六月份。”
Everyone knows children love snow. Mr Wood’s new book is meant for adults who remain infatuated. It is less a systematic history than a meander through assorted snow-related subjects—beginning with the snowflake itself, which the author describes poetically as “the DNA of God”.
每个人都知道，小孩子喜欢雪。伍德的新书是写给那些仍然热爱雪的成年人的。与其说这本书是一部系统性的历史书，倒不如说是一部讲述各种与雪有关的主题的漫谈。书的开端，作者阐述了雪花本身，并诗意地将雪花描述为“上帝的DNA”。
These miniature ice crystals were once neglected by scientists, who saw little practical benefit in studying them. Their disdain, however, was not shared by Wilson Bentley, a farm boy in Vermont who was given a microscope on his 15th birthday in 1880; later he acquired a bellows-camera, which he adapted to take the first-ever photomicrographs of snowflakes, being careful not to breathe on his evanescent subjects before tripping the shutter.
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这些微型冰晶曾一度为科学家们所忽视，他们认为研究雪花没有什么实际效益。然而，威尔逊·本特利并不认同科学家对雪花研究的不屑一顾。威尔逊·本特利是佛蒙特州的一个农家男孩，1880年，15岁的威尔逊得到了一台显微镜作为生日礼物；后来，他买了一台折叠暗箱照相机，并用它拍摄了有史以来第一张雪花的显微照片。在按动快门之前，他万分小心，唯恐自己的呼吸影响到雪花这个瞬息即逝的对象。
Inspired by Bentley’s ethereal images, in 1936 Nakaya Ukichiro, a Japanese nuclear physicist, became the first person to manufacture snow in the lab. His research on how the crystals form showed that snowflakes develop on the fly, during their sometimes hours-long journey to the ground. The higher the humidity that they encounter on the way, the more intricate their architecture becomes.
1936年，日本核物理学家中谷宇吉郎受到本特利超凡图像的启发，成为第一个在实验室制造雪的人。他对雪花晶体形成方式的研究表明，雪花有时要历经数小时飘落到地面，而它们就是在飘落的过程中形成的。飘落过程中，空气湿度越高，雪花的结构就越复杂。
Monster snowstorms interest Mr Wood, too, such as the great white hurricane of 1888, during which hundreds of people in the north-eastern United States died of hypothermia. Paralysing winter storms were disasters for cities like New York and Philadelphia, which initiated their own local “arms race against nature”, experimenting with crude ploughs to clear streets and with substances from cinders to grape extract and salt to de-ice them. Snow also spurred the development of subway systems that burrowed beyond the reach of winter weather.
伍德先生也对巨大的暴风雪产生了兴趣，比如1888年的白色飓风，当时美国东北部有数百人死于体温过低。对于纽约和费城这样的城市来说，冬季风暴是能引发瘫痪的灾难，当地为此发起了“与自然的军备竞赛”。人们试验用粗糙的犁清理街道，用煤渣、葡萄提取物和盐等物质除冰。降雪还刺激了地铁系统的发展，政府在冬季天气影响不到的地方挖掘地铁系统。
The atmospheric forces that created such blizzards remained unknown until Ooishi Wasaburo, another Japanese scientist, discovered chaotic eddies in the upper atmosphere, now known as the jet stream, in the 1920s. When the frigid jet stream bumps hard against humid air generated by the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, meteorological mayhem results. Given the complexity of the atmosphere—and the spotty nature of the available data on it—snow forecasting will always remain an inexact science, Mr Wood contends.
人们对于造成如此巨大的暴风雪的大气力量一直未知，直到另一位日本科学家大石和三郎于20世纪20年代发现了高层大气中的混乱漩涡（现在称为急流）。寒冷的急流猛烈撞击大西洋湾流产生的潮湿空气会引发气象灾害。伍德认为，鉴于大气的复杂性和大气现有数据的不确定性，降雪预测将永远是一门不精确的科学。
His scattershot chapters touch on the impact of erratic snowfall on the water crisis in California and on winter fun everywhere. He offers some frustratingly disjointed speculation about how climate change will alter future snowfalls. The short answer is that there will probably be more snow in places where humidity increases, and less where temperatures become too high to sustain it.
伍德书中的零散章节谈到了不稳定的降雪对加州水危机以及各地冬季乐趣的影响。针对气候变化将如何改变未来的降雪，他提出了一些令人沮丧的不连贯的推测。简而言之，在湿度增加的地方可能会有更多的降雪，在温度过高而无法维持太多湿气的地方，降雪量可能会减少。
And he reflects, if briefly, on snow’s delights and peculiar allure. Why do people either love it or hate it? Many long for it, Mr Wood proposes, because of the splendid isolation that it enforces. As with the pandemic, a white-out can be overwhelming. It can also direct attention inward, and help people return to themselves.
而且，即使雪很短暂，伍德也还是思考了雪的乐趣和独特的魅力。为什么人们对雪有爱有恨？伍德先生认为，许多人热爱雪是因为雪能够让他们与世隔绝。就像新冠疫情一样，暴风雪可能势不可挡。雪还可以让人们专注内心，帮助人们回归自我。
来源：经济学人
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