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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The stakes have never been higher, as the planet rounds out its hottest year ever recorded. The U.N.'s secretary-general is challenging leaders to get serious about cutting planet-warming gasses.
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Climate change costs tens of billions of dollars each year, hurts Americans' health and disrupts everyday life, including how we work, eat, play and mourn, according to a major new assessment. -
New Jersey offers a potential blueprint for densely populated states that are grappling with increased flooding due to climate change.
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Towns across the U.S. want to stop building homes that are vulnerable to climate-driven disasters, like wildfires, floods and droughts. It's easier said than done.
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Temperature records are falling left and right. Wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves and droughts are exacerbated by human-caused climate change.
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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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Home insurance is becoming more expensive and increasingly difficult to get in states that are on the front lines of climate change. And some of the potential solutions aren't politically popular.
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NOAA has announced its forecast for El Niño, as well as expectations for drought, heat and precipitation in the coming months. (This piece originally aired on ATC on July 20, 2023.)
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Scientists recommend the start of a geological epoch defined by how humans have impacted Earth — soot, plastics and radioactive fallout have made it into the rocks, ice and mud that form our planet.
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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.
