Rebecca Hersher
Rebecca Hersher (she/her) is a reporter on NPR's Climate Desk, where she reports on climate science, weather disasters, infrastructure and how humans are adapting to a hotter world.
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, heat waves and hurricanes in the U.S. and around the world.
Hersher was part of the NPR team that won the Kavli Science Journalism Award for the series "Beyond the Poles: The far-reaching dangers of melting ice," as well as a Peabody award and an Edward R. Murrow award for coverage of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Her 2019 coverage of climate-driven flash floods also won an Edward R. Murrow award, and she was part of a team that was honored with a 2020 Society of News Design award for multimedia storytelling. She was a finalist for the Daniel Schorr prize, a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting fellow and an NPR Above the Fray fellow, investigating the causes of the suicide epidemic in Greenland.
She can be reached at rhersher.01 on the free encrypted communication app Signal.
-
Across the country, lost-and-found networks seek to reunite objects with disaster survivors. The work can take years. In some cases, it's impossible to pick up all the pieces. -
Waterfront homes are collapsing along the coast. Homeowners generally have plenty of warning before their house buckles. So why aren't most houses removed, or at least emptied, before they fall? -
NPR dug into the upside-down world of FEMA flood insurance in coastal areas, and found many homeowners have no financial choice but to let their homes collapse. -
David Richardson worked to eliminate the country's top disaster agency when he led FEMA last year. Now, he says the administration has abandoned that goal. -
A major heat wave is affecting much of the eastern half of the United States this week, bringing dangerous conditions to multiple World Cup matches. -
More than 1 in 3 World Cup matches face dangerously hot, humid weather. Here's how to protect yourself from heat illness. -
Dangerously hot, humid weather is likely at many of the 2026 World Cup soccer venues. We crunched the numbers to see which matches are most at risk. -
The new movie tells a story about how good meteorology can literally win wars. It also takes us back in time, to when the United States was at a disadvantage when it came to weather science. -
The National Hurricane Center predicts eight to 14 storms will form during this year's Atlantic hurricane season, which begins June 1.
-
Forecasters expect 8 to 14 storms will form in the Atlantic between June 1 and November 30. But the danger is more serious than the numbers suggest.
