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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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. -
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. -
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. -
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.
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Some of the hottest global weather in recorded history is happening this week. It's likely that record temperatures will continue to occur this year.
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Some of the hottest global weather in recorded history is happening this week. It's likely that records will continue to fall this year. -
A new satellite will take continuous measurements of dangerous air pollution in the U.S. That has scientists, and residents, warily optimistic about undoing decades of environmental injustice. -
Researchers looked at thousands of homeowners who moved out of flood-prone homes. Most stayed within a 20-minute drive, and their new homes were safer from flooding. -
The natural climate pattern known as El Niño has officially begun. It exacerbates human-caused climate change, driving even hotter temperatures and other dangerous weather. -
Climate change is causing hurricanes to get more powerful and dangerous. Scientists weigh in on what that means for forecasts, emergency officials and you.
