Directions (Q.1-10) for the following 10 items: Read the following three passages and answer the items that follow each passage. Your answers to these items should be based on these passages only. Passage 1 There's been a change in the weather. Extreme events like the Nashville flood - described by officials as a once - in - a - millennium occurrence - are happening more frequently than they used to. A month before Nashville, torrential downpours dumped 11 inches of rain on Rio de janeiro in 24 hours, triggering mud slides that buried hundreds. About three months after Nashville, record rain in Pakistan caused flooding that affected more than 20 million people. In late 2011, floods in Thailand submerged hundreds of factories near Bangkok, creating a worldwide shortage of computer hard drives. And it is not just heavy rains that are making headlines. During the past decade we have also been severe droughts in places like Texas, Australia and Russia as well as in East Africa, where tens of thousands have taken refuge in camps. Deadly heat waves hit Europe, and record numbers of tornadoes have ripped across the United States. Losses from such events helped push the cost of whether disasters in 2011 to an estimated $150 billion worldwide, a roughly 25% jump from the previous year. In the USA, last year, a record 14 events caused a billion dollars or more of damage each, far exceeding the previous record of 9 such disasters in 2008. What is going on? Are these extreme events signals of a dangerous, human made shift in Earth's climate? Or are we just going through a natural stretch of bad luck? The short answer is: probably both. The primary forces driving recent disasters have been natural climate cycles, especially El Nino and La Nina. Scientists have learned a lot during the past few decades about how that strange seesaw in the equatorial Pacific affects weather worldwide. During an El Nino, a giant pool of warm water that normally sits in the central Pacific surges east all the way to South America; during a La Nina, it shrinks and retreats into the Western Pacific. Heat and water vapour coming off the warm pool generate thunderstorms so powerful and towering that their influence extends out of the tropics to the jet streams that blow across the middle altitudes. As the warm pool shifts back and forth along the equator, the wavy paths of the jet streams shift north and south- which changes the tracks that storms follow across the continents. An El Nino tends to push directing storms over the southern USA and Peru while visiting drought and fire on Australia. In a La Nina, the rains flood Australia and fail in the American Southwest and Texas - and in even more distant places like East Africa. Q. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

the loss of $150 billion worldwide in 2011 is the highest ever cost of weather related disasters in a single year

drastic changes in the weather can solely be attributed to human activities

instances of extreme weather phenomena have been observed throughout the course of history

weather disasters caused losses of at least $14 billion in the USA in 2011

Passage 1 There's been a change in the weather. Extreme events like the Nashville flood - described by officials as a once - in - a - millennium occurrence - are happening more frequently than they used to. A month before Nashville, torrential downpours dumped 11 inches of rain on Rio de janeiro in 24 hours, triggering mud slides that buried hundreds. About three months after Nashville, record rain in Pakistan caused flooding that affected more than 20 million people. In late 2011, floods in Thailand submerged hundreds of factories near Bangkok, creating a worldwide shortage of computer hard drives. And it is not just heavy rains that are making headlines. During the past decade we have also been severe droughts in places like Texas, Australia and Russia as well as in East Africa, where tens of thousands have taken refuge in camps. Deadly heat waves hit Europe, and record numbers of tornadoes have ripped across the United States. Losses from such events helped push the cost of whether disasters in 2011 to an estimated $150 billion worldwide, a roughly 25% jump from the previous year. In the USA, last year, a record 14 events caused a billion dollars or more of damage each, far exceeding the previous record of 9 such disasters in 2008. What is going on? Are these extreme events signals of a dangerous, human made shift in Earth's climate? Or are we just going through a natural stretch of bad luck? The short answer is: probably both. The primary forces driving recent disasters have been natural climate cycles, especially El Nino and La Nina. Scientists have learned a lot during the past few decades about how that strange seesaw in the equatorial Pacific affects weather worldwide. During an El Nino, a giant pool of warm water that normally sits in the central Pacific surges east all the way to South America; during a La Nina, it shrinks and retreats into the Western Pacific. Heat and water vapour coming off the warm pool generate thunderstorms so powerful and towering that their influence extends out of the tropics to the jet streams that blow across the middle altitudes. As the warm pool shifts back and forth along the equator, the wavy paths of the jet streams shift north and south- which changes the tracks that storms follow across the continents. An El Nino tends to push directing storms over the southern USA and Peru while visiting drought and fire on Australia. In a La Nina, the rains flood Australia and fail in the American Southwest and Texas - and in even more distant places like East Africa. Q. The passage attempts to describe which of the following...

possible reasons behind weather disasters

how weather disasters affect human life

the damage and monetary losses caused by weather disasters