Rebecca Hersher
Rebecca Hersher (she/her) is a reporter on NPR's Science Desk, where she reports on outbreaks, natural disasters, and environmental and health research. Since coming to NPR in 2011, she has covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, embedded with the Afghan army after the American combat mission ended, and reported on floods and hurricanes in the U.S. She's also reported on research about puppies. Before her work on the Science Desk, she was a producer for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered in Los Angeles.
Hersher was part of the NPR team that won a Peabody award for coverage of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and produced a story from Liberia that won an Edward R. Murrow award for use of sound. She was a finalist for the 2017 Daniel Schorr prize; a 2017 Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting fellow, reporting on sanitation in Haiti; and a 2015 NPR Above the Fray fellow, investigating the causes of the suicide epidemic in Greenland.
Prior to working at NPR, Hersher reported on biomedical research and pharmaceutical news for Nature Medicine.
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Climate change makes deadly floods, like what happened in Libya, more likely. Floods in China, Greece and Brazil in recent weeks underscore the growing danger. -
Four states are strengthening rules that require home sellers and landlords to disclose information about whether a home has flooded in the past, or is likely to flood in the future.
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The Atlantic hurricane season begins Wednesday. This year, the National Hurricane Center is making a big upgrade to its forecasts, especially when it comes to storm surge.
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This was the hottest July ever recorded on Earth, according to federal climate scientists. It's a stark reminder that humans are rapidly warming up the planet by burning fossil fuels.
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The Atlantic hurricane season is now projected to have "above-normal level of activity" according to an updated forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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It's the middle of the winter in Antarctica, when the ocean around the continent freezes. But this year there's less sea ice than ever recorded.
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It's increasingly expensive and difficult to get home insurance, as losses rise from climate-driven disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes. And the solutions aren't always politically popular.
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El Niño is warming up the water in the Pacific Ocean. That extra heat affects the whole planet, and has helped drive record-breaking hot weather.
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June 2023 was the hottest June on record, going back to 1850. And forecasters expect more records to fall as El Niño exacerbates human-caused climate change.
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Flood experts all use the same language to convey risk: 10-year floods, 100-year floods, 500-year floods. But those intervals are often misunderstood, and climate change is making them less accurate.
