SETH BORENSTEIN

Science writer

Borenstein is an Associated Press science writer, covering climate change, disasters, physics and other science topics. He is based in Washington, D.C.

FILE - Shoppers buy food in a supermarket in London, on Aug. 17, 2022. Food prices and overall inflation will rise as temperatures climb with climate change, a new study by an environmental scientist and the European Central Bank found. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

Higher temperatures mean higher food and other prices. A new study links climate shocks to inflation

A study by an environmental scientist and the European Central Bank finds that food prices and overall inflation will rise as temperatures climb with climate change.

FILE - A couple takes a selfie with cherry blossoms at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, March 29, 2023. The United States can expect a nice spring break from past too rainy or too dry extremes, federal meteorologists predicted Thursday, March 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

The US may catch a spring break on weather. Forecasters see minimal flooding and drought for spring

Federal meteorologists predict that the United States can expect a nice spring break from past too rainy or too dry extremes.

Celeste Saulo, World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General, speaks about the state of Global Climate 2023, during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 19, 2024. The U.N. weather agency is sounding a “red alert” about global warming, citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice, and warning that the world's efforts to reverse the trend have been inadequate. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)

UN weather agency issues ‘red alert’ on climate change after record heat, ice-melt increases in 2023

The U.N. weather agency is sounding a “red alert” about global warming, citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice.

This Aug. 23, 1965 photo provided by NASA shows astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, near the NASA Motor Vessel Retriever in the Gulf of Mexico during training. Stafford, who commanded a dress rehearsal flight for the 1969 moon landing and the first U.S.-Soviet space linkup, died Monday, March 18, 2024. He was 93. (NASA via AP)

Astronaut Thomas Stafford, commander of Apollo 10, has died at age 93

The NASA astronaut who commanded the dress rehearsal mission for the 1969 moon landing has died. Thomas Stafford died Monday in a Florida hospital. He was 93.

The remains of mobile homes are visible following a severe storm Friday, March 15, 2024, in Lakeview, Ohio. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Meteorologists say this year’s warm winter provided key ingredient for Midwest killer tornadoes

Tornado experts say the winter’s record warmth provided the key ingredient for a Midwest outbreak of deadly tornadoes and damaging gorilla hail that hit parts of the Midwest Wednesday and Thursday.

FILE - A flare burns at a well pad Aug. 26, 2021, near Watford City, N.D. American oil and natural gas wells, pipelines and compressors are spewing three times the amount of the potent heat-trapping gas methane as the government thinks, a new comprehensive study calculates. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

US energy industry methane emissions are triple what government thinks, study finds

A new study calculates that U.S. oil and natural gas wells, pipelines and compressors are spewing three times the amount of the potent heat-trapping gas methane as the government thinks.

FILE - A cyclist travels around Lake Michigan near the Adler Planetarium Monday, Feb. 26, 2024, in Chicago. Federal meteorologists on Friday, March 8, have made it official: It's the warmest U.S. winter on record by far. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

Much of America asks: Where did winter go? Spring starts early as US winter was warmest on record

Across much of America and especially in the normally chilly north, the country went through the winter months without, well, winter.

FILE - A man buys a cool drink from a roadside vendor on a sunny day in Mahawewa, a village north of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Feb. 29, 2024. Earth has exceeded global heat records in February, according to the European Union climate agency Copernicus. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File)

Last month was hottest February ever recorded. It’s the ninth-straight broken record

Scientists calculate that for the ninth straight month Earth has obliterated global heat records. The European Union’s climate agency Copernicus says February, the winter as a whole and the world’s oceans set new high-temperature marks.

John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, poses for a photo during an interview with The Associated Press in his office at the State Department, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024, in Washington. Kerry feels he’s going out on a high note as he retires from leading U.S. efforts in international negotiations to confront ever-worsening climate change. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

John Kerry reflects on time as top US climate negotiator and ‘major breakthrough’ in climate talks

John Kerry feels he’s going out on a high note as he retires from leading U.S. efforts in international negotiations to confront ever-worsening climate change.

FILE - Light is reflected on part of the Aral Sea outside Muynak, Uzbekistan, June 25, 2023. Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA believe if they can inject ice high up in the air, water vapor, water in its gas form, in the upper atmosphere would get a bit drier and that could cool Earth. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

Scientists create new idea on how to hack a warming planet: drying the upper atmosphere

Government scientists have cooked up a new concept for how to potentially cool an overheating Earth: Fiddle with the upper atmosphere to make it a bit drier.

FILE - A bird flies past as the sun rises over the Atlantic Ocean, Jan. 3, 2024, in Surfside, Fla. A new study suggests that scientists tracking climate change may be underestimating the impacts of rising temperatures. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

Study says 2023’s crazy Atlantic ocean heat, low Antarctic sea ice give glimpse of much hotter world

Off the charts “crazy” heat in the North Atlantic ocean and record-smashing Antarctic sea ice lows last year are far more severe than what Earth’s supposed to get with current warming levels.

This image provided by researcher J. Larsson in February 2024, made from a combination of Hubble Space Telescope images, shows the aftermath of supernova 1987A. Scientists have confirmed that the exploding star morphed into a neutron star, one of the oddest objects in the universe. (J. Larsson via AP)

Space telescope spies neutron star in the debris of famous supernova

Scientists have confirmed what became of a star that exploded in a stunning supernova visible to Earth more than three decades ago.

This image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows dead elkhorn coral on Feb. 9, 2024, at Carysfort Reef, northeast of Key Largo, Fla. Record hot seawater killed more than three-quarters of human-cultivated coral that scientists had placed in the Florida Keys in recent years in an effort to prop up a threatened species that’s highly vulnerable to climate change, researchers discovered. (Ben Edmonds/NOAA via AP)

Hot seawater killed most of cultivated coral in Florida Keys in setback for restoration effort

Researchers are finding that record hot seawater killed more than three-quarters of human-cultivated coral that scientists had placed in the Florida Keys in recent years.

FILE - A male polar bear eats a piece of whale meat as it walks along the shore of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba, Aug. 23, 2010. With Arctic sea ice shrinking from climate change, many polar bears have to shift their diets to land during parts of the summer, a new study suggests. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

For threatened polar bears, the climate change diet is a losing proposition

With Arctic sea ice shrinking from climate change, many polar bears have to shift their diets to land during parts of the summer.

FILE - People swim in the Atlantic Ocean in Biarritz, southwestern France, Oct. 27, 2021. An abrupt shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents that could put large parts of Europe in a deep freeze is looking a bit more likely and closer than before, according to a new story. (AP Photo/Bob Edme, File)

Ocean system that moves heat gets closer to collapse, which could cause weather chaos, study says

An abrupt shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents that could put large parts of Europe in a deep freeze is looking a bit more likely and closer than before as a new complex computer simulation finds a “cliff-like” tipping point looming in the future.

FILE - People gather at "El Morro" to watch the sunset during the San Sebastián Street festivities in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Jan. 21, 2024. For the eighth straight month, Earth was record hot, according to the European climate agency’s analysis of January 2024. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo, File)

Globe breaks heat record for 8th straight month. Golfers get to play in Minnesota’s ‘lost winter’

The European climate agency says for the eighth straight month in January, Earth was record hot. That was obvious in the northern United States, where about 1,000 people were golfing last month in a snow-starved Minneapolis during what the state is calling “the Lost Winter of 2023-24.”

FILE - Celeste Saulo, of Argentina, poses after she was elected as Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva, Switzerland, June 1, 2023, during the U.N. climate and weather agency's congress in Geneva. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, File)

New UN weather agency chief says rate of global warming is speeding up

The new chief of the World Meteorological Organization says the rate of human-caused climate change is accelerating and that warming has triggered more Arctic cold outbreaks further south, weighing in on two issues that divide climate scientists.

FILE - Residents wade down a street through receding floodwaters, two days after Hurricane Patricia, in the village of Rebalse, Jalisco State, Mexico, Oct. 25, 2015. A handful of powerful tropical storms in the last decade and the prospect of more to come has some experts proposing a new category of hurricanes: Category 6, which would be for storms with wind speeds of 192 miles per hour or more. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

Dial it up to Category 6? As warming stokes storms, some want a bigger hurricane category

A handful of super powerful tropical cyclones in the last decade has a couple of experts proposing a new category of whopper hurricanes: Category 6.

This undated image provided by Amos Winter shows a sponge from the Caribbean. This sponge, a simple animal that filters water, and a handful of other centuries-old sponges are causing some scientists to think human-caused climate change began sooner and has heated the world more than they thought. Many sponge species live long, and as they grow they record the conditions of the environment around them in their skeletons. (Courtesy of Amos Winter via AP)

Could the planet be warmer than we thought? Ocean sponges might be telling us something

A handful of centuries-old sponges from the Caribbean are causing some scientists to theorize that human-caused climate change began sooner and has warmed the world nearly a degree Fahrenheit more than most scientists previously thought.

FILE - United Nations Climate Chief Simon Stiell speaks during a plenary session at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Dec. 13, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File)

UN climate chief’s blunt message: Fewer loopholes, way more cash to really halt climate change

The United Nations’ climate chief says to keep Earth from overheating too much, the nations of the world need to put fewer loopholes in climate agreements and far more money — trillions of dollars a year — into financial help for poor nations.

FILE - John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the United States, left, listens to Xie Zhenhua, Special Envoy for Climate Change for China, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, May 24, 2022. Kerry and Xie are stepping down from their roles, marking a generational shift in the world of international climate negotiations. Activists and scientists hope that the world's two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases continue finding ways to collaborate to prevent the planet from heating up to catastrophic levels. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

Kerry and Xie exit roles that defined generation of climate action

For years, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua were the two most important people working on global warming. As the top representatives for the United States and China, almost no progress was possible without their involvement.

FILE - A worker pauses while removing snow from Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., Jan. 14, 2024. While the U.S. is shivering through bone-chilling cold, most of the rest of world is feeling unusually warm weather. Scientists Tuesday, Jan. 16, say that fits with what climate change is doing to Earth. (AP Photo/ Jeffrey T. Barnes, File)

US in deep freeze while much of the world is extra toasty? Yet again, it’s climate change

While the U.S. is shivering through bone-chilling cold, most of the rest of world is feeling unusually warm weather.

FILE - A man cools off in a shower at Ipanema beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sept. 24, 2023. The latest calculations from several science agencies Friday, Jan. 12, 2024, all say that global average temperatures for 2023 shattered existing heat records. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado, File)

Scientists explain why the record-shattering 2023 heat has them on edge. Warming may be worsening

The latest calculations from several science agencies showing Earth obliterated global heat records last year may seem scary.

FILE - The Colorado River runs through lightly snow covered mountains April 12, 2023 near Burns, Colo. Once regularly snowbound river basins across the globe, including the upper Colorado, are increasingly seeing their snowpack shrink and climate change is to blame, a new study found. (Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily via AP, File)

Climate change is shrinking snowpack in many places, study shows. And it will get worse

Areas across the globe have seen spring snowpack shrink over the last 40 years, and a new study says for many of them climate change is clearly to blame.

FILE - The cracked earth of the Sau reservoir is visible north of Barcelona, Spain, March 20, 2023. Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, the European climate agency said Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

Earth shattered global heat record in ’23 and it’s flirting with warming limit, European agency says

Earth shattered global annual heat records last year and it’s flirting with the warming threshold that nations wanted to stay within to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

FILE - Tourists fill plastic bottles with water from a public fountain at the Sforzesco Castle, in Milan, Italy, June 25, 2022. A new study found the average liter of bottled water has nearly a quarter million invisible pieces of nanoplastics, microscopic plastic pieces, detected and categorized for the first time by a microscope. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)

Scientists find about a quarter million invisible nanoplastic particles in a liter of bottled water

New research shows that the average liter of bottled water has nearly a quarter million invisible pieces of ever so tiny nanoplastics.

COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber gestures at the end of the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

Experts at odds over result of UN climate talks in Dubai; ‘Historic,’ ‘pipsqueak’ or something else?

The climate negotiations that just finished in Dubai hit upon the essence of compromise, finding common language that everyone accepted, at times grudgingly.

COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, right, celebrates passing the global stocktake with United Nations Climate Chief Simon Stiell, left, and COP28 CEO Adnan Amin during a plenary session at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

In a first, delegates at UN climate talks agree to transition away from planet-warming fossil fuels

Negotiators at United Nations COP28 climate talks agreed Wednesday that the world must transition away from planet-warming fossil fuels.

People walk through the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Sharp disagreements over future of planet-warming fossil fuels at UN climate talks in Dubai

Hopes for finishing a critical climate summit on time faded early Tuesday as countries were still far apart on key issues, including an agreement on what to do about the fossil fuels that are causing dangerous global warming.

Germany Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, right, accepts an item from an activist as she heads to a new session of talks at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Monday, Dec. 11, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

As COP28 nears finish, critics say proposal ‘doesn’t even come close’ to what’s needed on climate

Countries at United Nations-led climate talks in Dubai moved closer to reaching a final deal on Monday, but critics condemned a draft agreement as a watered-down document that won’t stop dangerous climate change.