Over the years, we've sometimes opted to put a scenic beach setting on our August cover to evoke a sense of calm and tranquility, something we can all appreciate as school ends, flu and cold season grinds to a halt, and, if we're lucky, we embark on a much-needed vacation. But this summer, as our staff poured over photos of beautiful beaches, we couldn't help but think of how summers are changing, with some areas of the country facing more extreme weather conditions and hotter temperatures. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, since 1901, the average surface temperature across the contiguous 48 states "has risen at an average rate of 0.17[degrees]F per decade," with temperatures rising more quickly since the late 1970s. The most recent decade was the nation's warmest on record, and temperatures are expected to continue to rise. At the time of this writing, the Northeast has just cleared unprecedented hazardous smoke that brought the air quality alerts up to the highest levels in some states. The smoke descended from Canada, which is seeing its worst wildfire season in years, and is expected to continue to affect parts of the United States throughout the summer. Consequently, the photo chosen for this month's cover, of a wind power station by the sea in Zhoushan, China, seemed appropriate. With the wind turbines in the distance offering an alternative to fossil fuels, and a lone man on the beach evoking a sense of how small we are in the grand scheme of the world we live in, it is, as the photo site Shutterstock described, "a perfect combination of green energy and nature."-Amy M. Collins, managing editor