Climate Point: A new hottest day on record

Wildfires blazed into headlines this week as a fire in northern California exploded in size and a pair of fires burned into a Canadian resort town, while much of the country continued to swelter under heat warnings. 

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. I’m Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent with Paste BN’s climate and environment team.

This year's run of outdoing 2023 as the warmest year on record took another leap forward this week, after global average temperatures set a record Sunday, then an even higher record on Monday. Even after 13 straight months of temperature records, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service said Monday was Earth's hottest day since at least 1940.

High temperatures and windy conditions fanned the flames of fires in the North American West this week. A fire dubbed the Park Fire that started Wednesday afternoon became a 125,000 acre blaze in under 36 hours in mountainous terrain northeast of Chico, California. Evacuation warnings and orders were issued as the massive blaze picked up momentum.

Arson investigators, acting on the account of an eyewitness, arrested Ronnie Stout, 42, who they planned to charge with intentional arson. The eyewitness told authorities Stout pushed a flaming car over a 60-foot embankment where it quickly caught the surrounding dry brush on fire. Investigators also made an arrest in an Arizona fire case.

In total, firefighters were tracking dozens of large fires across at least 11 western states, including Washington and Oregon. Many wildfires in the Northwest area continue to exhibit active to extreme fire behavior, with evacuation orders in effect on 17 wildfires, the National Interagency Fire Center said in a Thursday update.

In Alberta, Canada, two blazes moving at speeds of up to 60 mph burned together in the remote tourist resort town of Jasper in the Athabasca Valley. The town and the surrounding Jasper National Park were evacuated and the flames moved into the town. Firefighters were able to save critical facilities but reported that homes and businesses were lost, according to Parks Canada.

Keith Matheny at the Detroit Free Press took an in-depth look at how smoke from Canada's wildfires can make it difficult for U.S. residents to breathe. Research shows Canada's wildfires are growing in intensity and area burned. Matheny reported it reached nightmarish proportions last year. Canada didn't just break its wildfire records in 2023, it obliterated them.

Heat also figures prominently in this summer's hurricane season with a lull over the Pacific Ocean at the beginning of the season blamed in part on wind patterns influenced by the unusually warm waters in the Atlantic.

Winds of change at Republican National Convention?

For what may have been the first time ever, climate change was discussed at the Republican National Convention, though it was on the fringes and not in prime time or on the platform, wrote Laura Schulte and Siddhant Pusdekar for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

Young voters were driving the conversation, demanding change from their representatives hoping for re-election. At an event that drew more than 100 people, the convention’s chairman Reince Priebus said Republicans should start talking more about human-driven climate change.

"I think it's very important for the party to have this conversation, to have this conversation with people that are taking an intelligent look at what we can be doing," Priebus said. "I think it's important for us to learn how to communicate, find out where those basic agreements on these issues are, and just start there and learn together.”

Wind turbine blade controversy continues

Meanwhile, fallout continued this week after sections of an offshore wind turbine blade broke away, disintegrated, and washed up as shards of fiberglass onto beaches in Nantucket, some 15 miles away. 

Federal regulators are investigating what happened at the Vineyard Wind facility off the coast of Massachusetts.  

In a quarterly earnings call with investors, an executive with GE Vernova, the blade’s manufacturing company, said the company’s investigation showed the blade “experienced a manufacturing deviation.” CEO Scott Strazik told investors that analysts had found no indications of an engineering design flaw. 

Several groups and local elected officials issued statements expressing concerns about the incident. One group that has been critical of offshore wind development, Save Long Beach Island, called for a moratorium, saying the shattered turbine is a reminder of what could go wrong. 

Wild things

A shark by any other name. One of the potential culprits in shark bites this summer has counterparts around the world. Bull sharks are called requin bouledogue in France, Tiburon in Spain and Zambezi in South Africa. Chad Gillis with the Paste BN Network in Florida writes that bull sharks are among the most fascinating marine predators.

Baby shark doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo In Texas, Brandi Addison finds that baby bull shark numbers are increasing, including in Galveston Bay and Sabine Lake. The sharks spawn in freshwater rivers in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Indian River Lagoon, an estuary on Florida's East Coast.

Officials along the Indian River Lagoon learned this week that federal officials will send $9.4 million their way to help with projects such as sea grass and oyster restoration. In Wisconsin, officials are looking into whether heavy rains contributed to a fish kill in Marquette County.

Where's the love? A riverkeeper posed this question about the sturgeon population off the Northeastern coast this week. The environmental groups plan to sue in New York, New Jersey and Delaware to prevent the endangered Atlantic Sturgeon from being caught and killed in commercial fishing nets. "If this was a bald eagle, everybody would be screaming," said George Jackman, the habitat restoration coordinator for the Ossining-based Riverkeeper. The prehistoric fish can weigh up to 800 pounds.