Rebecca Hersher Rebecca Hersher is a reporter on NPR's Climate Desk.
Rebecca Hersher at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., July 25, 2018. (photo by Allison Shelley) (Square)
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Rebecca Hersher

Allison Shelley/NPR
Rebecca Hersher at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., July 25, 2018. (photo by Allison Shelley)
Allison Shelley/NPR

Rebecca Hersher

Correspondent, Climate Desk

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 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. 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 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.

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.

Story Archive

Tuesday

A home is surrounded by floodwater in Texas. Beryl hit the state as a Category-1 hurricane. The remnants of the storm are expected to move far from the ocean toward the Midwest, where they also pose risks of dangerous flooding. Brandon Bell/Getty Images/Getty Images North America hide caption

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Brandon Bell/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

Thursday

Family members survey their home destroyed by Hurricane Beryl, in Ottley Hall, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on Tuesday. Beryl is the most powerful storm to form this early in the Atlantic hurricane season. Lucanus Ollivierre/AP hide caption

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Lucanus Ollivierre/AP

Tuesday

People in the Upper Midwest are grappling with catastrophic flooding

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Sunday

Wilmer Vasquez was a gregarious extrovert. "He was very outgoing person," remembers his ex-girlfriend Rose Carvajal. He died in 2023 at just 29 years old after working outside as a roofer in record-breaking August heat in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Rose Carvajal hide caption

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Rose Carvajal

Extreme heat contributed to his brother’s death. He worries he could be next

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Friday

Tuesday

Hurricane Ian passes over western Cuba in 2022, as captured by a U.S. weather satellite. Climate change is causing more extreme weather, and creates new challenges for weather forecasters. AP/NOAA hide caption

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AP/NOAA

Weather Service FAQ

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Monday

Catastrophic flash floods killed dozens of people in eastern Kentucky in July 2022. Here, homes in Jackson, Ky., are flooded with water. Arden S. Barnes/The Washington Post via Getty Images hide caption

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Arden S. Barnes/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Climate change is deadly. Exactly how deadly? Depends who's counting

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Friday

People walk through cooling misters on June 4, 2024 in Las Vegas. Tens of millions of people from California to Texas are experiencing intense heat. New data shows that the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has hit a new record. John Locher/AP hide caption

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John Locher/AP

New CO2 Record

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Tuesday

Mandy Messinger's early memories of her father, Craig, are of the smell of his tobacco pipe and how he taught her to throw a baseball. Craig Messinger, was killed in a flash flood near Philadelphia in 2021. She is still processing his death. Mandy Messinger hide caption

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Mandy Messinger

Craig Messinger is one example of the toll climate change is taking on human life

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Friday

As many as 25 hurricanes are expected to form between June 1 and Nov. 30

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Thursday

An extreme hurricane season is predicted for the Atlantic starting June 1

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Hurricane Ian killed more than 150 people when it slammed into Florida in 2022. Here, Fort Myers, Fla., resident Stedi Scuderi looks over her apartment after it was inundated by flood water from the storm. Joe Raedle/Getty Images/Getty Images North America hide caption

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Joe Raedle/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

Thursday

Another hotter-than-normal summer lies ahead for the U.S., forecasters say

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Monday

Why Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth

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Thursday

Nearly half of the major cities in China are sinking, a new study finds. Subsidence exacerbates flooding related to sea level rise from climate change. Parts of Shanghai have subsided up to 9 feet in the last century. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

Tuesday

A flooded parking lot on the campus of Rice University after it was inundated with water from Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. Scott Olson/Getty Images hide caption

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Scott Olson/Getty Images

The unexpected links between climate change, student debt and lower lifetime earnings

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Tuesday

Residents of Tacloban in the central Philippines in 2013, after Typhoon Haiyan devastated the area. Scientists are renewing calls for a new Category 6 designation for the the most powerful hurricanes and typhoons, such as Haiyan. Aaron Favila/AP hide caption

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Aaron Favila/AP

Monday

How climate change impacts atmospheric rivers

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Monday

People walk next to a cracked panel apartment building in the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk in 2018. Climate change is causing permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, to thaw across the Arctic. When the earth thaws, it can destabilize building foundations, roads, pipelines and other infrastructure. Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images

Why the war in Ukraine is bad for climate science

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Friday

A woman carries her pet dogs as residents are evacuated on rubber boats through floodwaters in northern China's Hebei province in August 2023 amid severe flooding from Typhoon Doksuri. 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded, scientists say. Andy Wong/AP hide caption

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Andy Wong/AP

Tuesday

2023 was the hottest year on record – by a large margin

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Thursday

SunPower Corp. solar panels technician Jose Arrechiga braves the extreme heat as he installs solar panels on a residence's roof in Pasadena, Calif., Wednesday, July 19, 2023. The European climate agency calculates that 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded globally. Damian Dovarganes/AP hide caption

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Damian Dovarganes/AP

2023 was the hottest year on record. Is this how it's going to be now?

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