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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El Niño is coming, which usually means fewer storms. But abnormally warm ocean water makes hurricanes more likely. It's a rare situation -
Floods, wildfires, heat waves and hurricanes cause billions of dollars of property damage each year. Can federal climate scientists help the insurance industry keep up? -
Melting glaciers and ice sheets are far from where most people live. But the impacts stretch across the planet. See if you can guess how. -
The connection between weather and climate change has never been clearer. And simultaneous extremes, such as hot and dry weather together, are particularly dangerous. -
Scientists and forecasters are trying to figure out how to talk about the connection between climate change and severe weather. It could have big impacts on how people think about global warming. -
Delegates reached a last-minute deal to pay vulnerable countries for damages caused by climate change. But the final agreement does not put humanity on track to avoid catastrophic warming. -
A new early warning system for weather disasters, calls for wealthy nations and corporations to pay up and dire descriptions of human suffering. Here's what happened at COP27 today. -
Most Americans have recently been affected by extreme weather and support efforts to protect against future disasters, a new survey finds. And many people suffer long-term financial problems. -
Burning oil, coal and other fossil fuels releases plumes of tiny, dangerous particles. A new study estimates that eliminating that pollution would save about 50,000 lives in the U.S. each year. -
Some ecosystems have already been irreversibly altered, scientists say. And climate change is wreaking havoc on human health.
