سؤال قراءة ستيب محلول — المفردات في السياق (تدريب 7441)

a few weeks, many would welcome the idea of it getting a bit hotter. (2) Unfortunately, things are not so simple. Global warming doesn’t just mean the world will slowly get warmer. Paradoxically, it could cause certain areas to get colder – a lot colder. The latest predictions are that northern Europe could even be plunged into an ice age. While areas of south-eastern Europe would continue to get hotter and drier, Britain could find itself, surrounded by sea ice. (3) The reason for this concerns the Greenland ice sheet. This is one of the biggest expanses of ice in the world. It is so big that if it all melted sea levels would rise by 7 meters. Due to rising emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels, this ice sheet is melting at an alarming rate. But how could the melting of the Greenland ice sheet threaten to plunge northern Europe into a new ice age? The word “alarming” in paragraph (3) is closest in meaning to…………….