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.
Before coming to the Climate Desk, Hersher worked for NPR's Science Desk, was a producer on Weekend All Things Considered and covered biomedical news for Nature Medicine. [Copyright 2025 NPR]
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The National Climate Assessment is the most influential source of information about climate change in the United States. -
Hurricane forecasters and scientists rely on weather data collected and processed by Department of Defense satellites. The Navy has decided to stop sharing the data. -
Every year, millions of Americans rely on FEMA assistance after hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes and other disasters. The president says state governments should do more. -
Jeremy Greenberg was in charge of coordinating federal help after hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes and other emergencies. He has resigned from leading FEMA's National Response Coordination Center. -
Climate.gov is the main source of timely climate-related information for the public. It will stop publishing new information because the Trump administration laid off everyone who worked on it. -
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has a long history of failing to help those who need assistance the most after disasters. Biden-era changes meant to fix some of those problems now face an uncertain future. -
A performance of the masterpiece will be transmitted into space on Saturday. The waltz has been associated with space travel since its inclusion in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. -
Forecasters expect 13 to 19 storms to form in the Atlantic between June 1 and the end of November. At least 6 of those are forecast to be full-blown hurricanes. -
It's getting more common for a lot of tornadoes to form over a big area in a short period of time. But the total number of tornadoes each year in the U.S. is stable. -
Whether you get your forecast from an app on your phone, a website or a meteorologist on TV, most of the underlying information comes from the federal government.
