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 warming up the water in the Pacific Ocean. That extra heat affects the whole planet, and has helped drive record-breaking hot weather. -
Some of the hottest global weather in recorded history is happening this week. It's likely that records will continue to fall this year.
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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.
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As the 2023 hurricane season gets underway, NPR spoke with the scientists at the National Hurricane Center who provide crucial public information about hurricanes. They are responsible for warning people about how large a storm is, who is in its path and what dangers it poses.
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Climate change is making flooding and wind damage from hurricanes more common in the U.S. That means dangerous storms are getting more frequent, even though the total number of storms isn't changing.
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Abnormally hot water in the Gulf of Mexico helped Hurricane Ian gain strength. Rapidly intensifying major hurricanes are more likely as the Earth gets hotter.
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Sea levels are rising even faster on the East Coast and Gulf Coast. And advances in climate science mean we can see the future clearly for the first time.
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Hurricane Ida rapidly gained strength right before it hit Louisiana this weekend. Abnormally hot water in the Gulf of Mexico acted as fuel for the storm.
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The U.N. has released the most comprehensive global climate science report ever. It is unequivocal: Humans must stop burning fossil fuels or suffer catastrophic impacts.
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Scientists say humans must keep global temperatures from increasing more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. The World Meteorological Organization warns that number is looming.
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The computer model that predicts the weather is getting more power. Climate change is upping the stakes for forecasters as extreme weather gets more common and residents demand earlier warnings.
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Space is the best place — maybe the only place — to get a complete picture of how climate change is affecting the Earth's oceans. And what happens in the ocean does not stay in the ocean.
