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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Ice in Antarctica is melting rapidly. That's driving sea level rise around the world. But some places are threatened more than others, and Texas is in the crosshairs.
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Melting glaciers and ice sheets are far from where most people live. But the impacts stretch across the planet. See if you can guess how.
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Galveston, Texas, has some of the fastest sea level rise in the world. To protect the city, engineers need to know how fast ice in West Antarctica will melt. Scientists are racing to figure it out.
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Scientists working for the United Nations released their final report on the state of the Earth's climate, current greenhouse gas emissions and the options humans have for curbing those emissions.
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There is one number that the Environmental Protection Agency relies on to decide which climate policies to pursue. So why does that number assume the lives of richer people are worth more?
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Oil refineries release billions of pounds of pollution into waterways each year, according to regulatory data. NPR found that pollution is concentrated near places where people of color live.
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The Environmental Protection Agency announced new limits on dangerous soot pollution. Public health officials say reducing soot in the air saves lives.
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A new study suggests that mid-latitude glaciers, including those in western Canada, the Rocky Mountains and central Europe, will be gone by the end of the century.
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Climate goals can feel distant. But climate change is happening right now. Speed up the benefits for taking action, psychologists say, if you want leaders and others to pay attention and act.
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This year's hurricane season got off to a very slow start. But it only takes one big storm to wreak havoc. And climate change makes such storms more likely.