The Guardian Climate Change

Reported temperatures on continent in midwinter reach 28C above expectations on some days in July

Ground temperatures across great swathes of the ice sheets of Antarctica have soared an average of 10C above normal over the past month, in what has been described as a near record heatwave.

While temperatures remain below zero on the polar land mass, which is shrouded in darkness at this time of year, the depths of southern hemisphere winter, temperatures have reportedly reached 28C above expectations on some days.

Governor says national guard will support first responders as state becomes latest in west to battle several major fires

One person has died and at least five homes were destroyed as Colorado becomes the latest western state to battle several major wildfires.

The Boulder county sheriff, Curtis Johnson, reported the death was discovered in one of the five homes burned by the Stone Canyon fire near the town of Lyon, but did not provide further details. The fire has burned more than 1,500 acres and was reported 20% contained on Wednesday evening.

DKNY, Tom Ford and Reebok among companies to score 0% in Fashion Revolution report ranking top 250 firms

Almost a quarter of the world’s biggest fashion brands, such as Reebok, Tom Ford and DKNY, do not have a public plan for decarbonisation, a report has found.

The fashion industry can be highly polluting. In some casesforever chemicals have been found in the waters near factories. The industry is also a concerning source of waste, with fast fashion accused of encouraging overconsumption.

Protesters say recently approved tax-free datacentre will ‘provide nothing except toxic waste and greenhouse gases’

Google’s plans to build a datacentre in Uruguay have angered environmentalists, who say the project will release thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide and hazardous waste.

Uruguay’s environmental authorities recently approved the datacentre, which will use air conditioning to cool its servers. The company initially proposed using millions of litres of fresh water to cool its infrastructure, but this caused an outcry in a country that suffered its worst drought since 1950 last year, causing its capital city to run short of drinking water.

UK lender has faced backlash for providing services to climate polluters and defence firms with alleged links to Gaza war

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The chief executive of Barclays has praised Wimbledon organisers for “rightly resisting pressures” to drop the bank’s sponsorship, suggesting that protests over issues including its climate policies are “ultimately misguided”.

The UK bank has been the subject of a wave of demonstrations by climate campaigners and anti-war activists. They claim Barclays has been sponsoring big sporting events and music festivals to “launder” its reputation, and “cover up” its role in funding climate polluters and providing financial services to defence companies, in particular those accused of supplying equipment to Israel as it continues its war in Gaza.

Nearly 100 wildfires are burning, including massive blaze in California that has become fifth-largest in state history

A person has been killed in one of several wildfires threatening heavily populated areas of the Colorado foothills, authorities said on Wednesday.

A body was discovered in a home about 1 mile (1.6km) north of Lyons, Colorado, according to Curtis Johnson, the Boulder county sheriff. He said that detectives were assisting the investigation into the death, but declined to provide further details.

Scorching temperatures in Mediterranean countries and north Africa already causing increase in premature deaths

The “heat dome” causing scorching temperatures across western Europe and north Africa, and boiling athletes and spectators at the Olympic Games in Paris, would have been impossible without human-caused global heating, a rapid analysis has found.

Scientists said the fossil-fuelled climate crisis made temperatures 2.5C to 3.3C hotter. Such an event would not have happened in the world before global heating but is now expected about once a decade, they said. Continued emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will make them even more frequent, the researchers warned.

Cyclone Freddy left a trail of destruction when it hit southern Africa last year. Sixteen months later, 2,695 households have received relocation payments with no strings attached

Gladys Austin is a climate disaster survivor. In March last year the 39-year-old mother of six stood in ankle-deep water in the room where her family slept. She tried to stay calm as the relentless rain battered her home. Her village’s trading centre, school and the chief’s home, built on an elevated foundation, were all submerged.

The storm destroyed the sandbars on Malawi’s Ruo River, where she and her husband, Biyeni Twaya, 46, fished as well as the field they had farmed since their youth, growing maize, beans and tomatoes. Goats, ducks and chickens, bags of grain that Austin had saved over the years, were all washed away. She estimates they were worth 6m kwacha (£2,700).

Storms result in caved-in roads and crushed cars nearly three weeks after flooding from Hurricane Beryl

Thunderstorms and torrential rain brought another wave of violent floods Tuesday that caved in roads, crushed vehicles, pushed homes off their foundations and led to dramatic boat rescues in north-eastern Vermont, nearly three weeks after flooding from Hurricane Beryl.

Flash flood warnings remained in effect through Tuesday afternoon hours after some areas got 6 to more than 8in (15 to more than 20cm) starting late the night before.

Park fire scorches 380,000 acres as firefighters battle blazes across US west, including historic mining town of Havilah

The largest wildfire in the US swelled to more than 380,000 acres (154,000 hectares) on Tuesday morning, an area bigger than the city of Los Angeles and three times the surface area of Lake Tahoe, as thousands of firefighters battled the blaze in a remote wilderness area in northern California.

Meanwhile, the destruction caused by wildfires raging across the US west came into sharp focus as photographers documented the destruction left by the Borel fire in southern California. The fast-growing fire tore through the historic mining town of Havilah, leaving burnt buildings, cars and forests.

Firm says it is now re-adjusting to a realistic end date and blames difficulties in procuring new planes and sustainable jet fuel

Air New Zealand has become the first major airline to drop its 2030 goal to cut carbon emissions.

The company has blamed difficulties in procuring new planes and sustainable jet fuel.

John Podesta says negotiations ‘to find a path forward’ continue with urgent discussions planned for Cop29

Trade frictions and increasing tension between the US and China won’t affect climate negotiations between the two superpowers if he can help it, the US climate chief has pledged.

John Podesta, a senior adviser to Joe Biden on international climate policy, said the relationship between the world’s two biggest emitters and largest economies was critical to climate action, despite what appears to be a deepening gulf over trade policy.

Researchers call for immediate action to reduce methane emissions and avert dangerous escalation in climate crisis

Global emissions of methane, a powerful planet-heating gas, are “rising rapidly” at the fastest rate in decades, requiring immediate action to help avert a dangerous escalation in the climate crisis, a new study has warned.

Methane emissions are responsible for half of the global heating already experienced, have been climbing significantly since around 2006 and will continue to grow throughout the rest of the 2020s unless new steps are taken to curb this pollution, concludes the new paper. The research is authored by more than a dozen scientists from around the world and published on Tuesday.

Oil and gas company to increase dividend and buy-backs as quarterly profit hits $2.8bn

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BP has posted better than expected profits of almost $2.8bn (£2.2bn) for the April to June period and has promised to shower its shareholders with higher dividends and share buy-backs over the rest of the year.

The company will lift its dividend payments while buying back stock worth $1.75bn over the next three months to bring its total buy-backs for the first half of the year to $3.5bn – and $7bn for 2024 as whole.

Report finds 13 member states generated more energy from wind and solar power than coal and gas for first time in 2024

Wind turbines and solar panels have overtaken fossil fuels to generate 30% of the European Union’s electricity in the first half of the year, a report has found.

Power generation from burning coal, oil and gas fell 17% in the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period the year before, according to climate thinktank Ember. It found the continued shift away from polluting fuels has led to a one-third drop in the sector’s emissions since the first half of 2022.

Many fires were sparked by the weather, with climate crisis increasing lightning strikes amid blistering heat and dry conditions

Fire crews made progress in the battle against major wildfires that have left a trail of damage in the western United States, but thousands of firefighters continue to tackle the flames.

In northern California, the Park fire grew at ferocious speeds to become one of the largest wildfires in the state this year. In southern California, a blaze swept through the historic mining town of Havilah. And in Oregon and Idaho, authorities were assessing the damage caused by several large wildfires raging there.

A vast array of solutions are being worked on but experts urge a ‘fundamental rethink’ as temperatures are forecast to climb even higher in coming decades

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After 18 months of record-breaking ocean temperatures, the planet’s reefs are in the middle of the most widespread heat-stress event on record.

Across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, latest figures from the US government’s Coral Reef Watch, shared with the Guardian, show 73% of the world’s corals have been hit with enough heat for them to begin bleaching.

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Cop29 host Baku has cleaned up since its Black City days – but this summit needs to do more than whitewash the facade of a petrostate

Just a few miles from the site of the next UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, is a district that for more than a century was known as Black City. Every house and factory was thickly stained with soot, from the oil that was extracted and refined here, by the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Baku was the world’s first oil town: pioneering wells were dug in the 1840s, followed by refineries from 1859. Alfred Nobel and his brothers came in that decade and established what became a major industry, contributing a sizeable portion of their fortune to establishing the Nobel prize. People take pride that oil produced here helped win the second world war, supplying the Soviet army fighting Adolf Hitler on the eastern front.

Regions’ vast potential is being blocked by the need for better investments, key partnerships and reforms to global finance

After Hurricane Beryl stomped across the Caribbean, days after torrential rainfall destroyed thousands of homes in Ghana and Niger, it was evident that the two regions face many of the same challenges. Weeks of catastrophic events underscore the increasing necessity to transform the world’s financial architecture to support these areas.

Earlier this summer, two big conferences happened simultaneously, about 7,000 miles apart. One in the Caribbean, Antigua, and the other in Africa,Kenya. The themes were similar: the financial conundrum and developmental crises plaguing the regions.

Conservation charity raises alarm over climate crisis after wet spring and summer dampen mating chances

Butterfly numbers are the lowest on record in the UK after a wet spring and summer dampened their chances of mating.

Butterfly Conservation, which runs the Big Butterfly Count, sounded the alarm after this year’s count revealed the worst numbers since it began 14 years ago.