Modal Verbs

What Modal Verbs do you Know?

"Standing on a peak of Ross Island, home to McMurdo Station, Antarctica’s largest research base, one can see mighty ice streams and glaciers descending to the sea". What kind of modality is expressed in this sentence?

“Diatoms can end up anywhere,” Kennet says.

What is the modality?

• Ability

• Likelihood

• Permission

• Possibility

"One important reason, MacAyeal maintains, is that fluctuations in surface temperatures can take

millennia to propagate down through ice sheets". What is the modality?

• Ability

• Likelihood

• Permission

• Possibility

"On a clear day at McMurdo one _____ see a banner of smoke trailing from the crest of Mount Erebus, an active volcano that rises 3,794 meters above Ross Island."

• must

• should

• will

• can

Blankenship has found evidence of another mechanism that could trigger acceleration of

the ice stream: volcanism below the ice. What is the modality?

“This is just arm waving,” Marchant says. “But it’s one possibility

that _____ be out there.”

• should

• must

• would

• can

"Eventually, over thousands of years, sea levels might drop again as increased snowfall caused by

the warmer weather builds up the East Antarctic ice". What is the modality?

• Obligation

• Possibility

• LIkelihood

• Ability

Flying toward the South Pole in a C-130 military transport, one _____ not think of the vast ice

sheet below as an ephemeral phenomenon

• might

• could

• should

• will

If the Antarctic ice cap disintegrates, sea levels _____ surge by as much as 60 meters

• must

• will

• should

• could