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.
-
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. Kansas City's Friday evening match between Ghana and Colombia may not escape the high temperatures and humidity. -
Dangerously hot, humid weather is likely at many of the 2026 World Cup soccer venues — especially Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, which is not covered. NPR crunched the numbers to see which matches are most at risk. -
Some of the country's highest home insurance prices are in the central U.S., a region generally considered to be protected from climate-driven disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes. -
It's getting more common for a lot of tornadoes to form over a big area in a short period of time — such as the outbreak that killed dozens in Kentucky and Missouri. But the total number of tornadoes each year in the U.S. is stable. -
The number of patients being treated on a Navy hospital ship and inside a convention center has more than doubled in the last two days, after both facilities switched to treating people with COVID-19. -
More than 14,000 people have now been hospitalized in New York City for COVID-19. But two large overflow facilities have been operating far below their capacity. -
Many states are projected to have excessive demand for ventilator machines in the coming weeks, but no state government has formally asked hospitals to prepare for difficult and complex crisis triage. -
On-site testing was delayed for weeks at a Brooklyn hospital that has been designated COVID-19 only. Rapid on-site testing can help hospitals prevent the virus from spreading inside their facilities. -
Despite a statewide effort to procure and distribute coronavirus testing supplies to hospitals in New York, some facilities still don't have what they need to test patients quickly on-site.
-
Spring begins at 11:50 p.m. ET on March 19 this year. It is the earliest nationwide vernal equinox since 1896. Why, you ask? Get ready for orbital mechanics and a lot of information about calendars.
