Emily Mae Czachor
Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBS News who covers breaking news with a consistent focus on extreme weather, climate and the human consequences of environmental risk. Her work stands out for how she connects fast-developing events - from heat waves and hurricanes to disasters and long-running criminal cases - to the people, systems and decisions that shape their impact. She brings the same sensibility to coverage of crime and justice, treating those stories as part of a broader landscape of public safety and social responsibility.
Extreme weather and climate
Czachor’s core beat is extreme weather and climate, where she covers major events in real time while foregrounding their scale and risks. She reports on high-impact heat waves, including forecasts of temperatures reaching well above 110 degrees in the Western U.S., emphasizing the threat to residents and infrastructure.
Her coverage of Hurricane Polo, an extremely powerful Category 5 storm off Mexico’s Pacific coast, guides readers through the storm’s path and the potential for life-threatening flooding. She tracks seasonal patterns and records, such as Atlantic hurricane activity breaking a 60-year record for the longest stretch of unusually low storm counts, tying atmospheric conditions like El Niño to changes in risk.
Across these stories she blends meteorological detail, official warnings and practical implications, making climate and weather coverage accessible while underscoring its urgency.
Disasters, accidents and public safety
Beyond pure climate reporting, Czachor covers disasters and accidents in ways that highlight vulnerabilities in public safety systems. She has written about firefighters struggling with staffing and equipment shortages heading into wildfire season, showing how resource gaps can leave communities exposed as fire risk grows.
Her reporting on a teen rescued alive after clinging to a capsized fishing boat in the Bering Sea juxtaposes dramatic survival with the harsh conditions that make such emergencies deadly. She has covered incidents like a hunter fatally shooting a woman he mistook for a deer in Delaware, documenting how misjudgments and gun use intersect with rural safety.
Czachor also reports on emerging threats such as sextortion schemes fueled by deepfake images, profiling a former TV meteorologist who fights to reclaim her likeness from doctored material. Taken together, these pieces show a consistent interest in how individual decisions, technology and preparedness intersect to produce or mitigate harm.
Crime, justice and long-running cases
Czachor frequently writes about crime and justice, especially cases that unfold over long periods or raise questions about accountability.
She has covered the resolution of a Navy veteran’s 1987 murder after a suspect who provided DNA later died by suicide, tracing how advances in forensic tools can finally close cold cases. In reporting on a lab worker who vanished and was later found dead in a national forest, she follows the arc from disappearance to discovery, keeping attention on both investigative process and the personal loss involved.
Her work on the daughters of 9/11 victims seeking justice and answers about the accused mastermind’s stalled trial examines how families confront legal delays decades after the attacks. In these stories she treats legal proceedings, investigative breakthroughs and unresolved questions not as abstractions but as lived realities for victims, families and communities.
Earlier beats and reporting background
Czachor’s current remit builds on experience across multiple beats and formats. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Southern California and began her career reporting on homelessness in Venice Beach, followed by a brief stint in local radio. Before joining CBS News, she covered entertainment and politics at outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek, giving her familiarity with culture, campaigns and the dynamics of online attention.
Her reporting has been cited in the Northwestern Law Review and the Harvard Law Review, an indication that her work on legal and policy-adjacent stories is used as source material in scholarly analysis.
At CBS News, she works as both reporter and editor in the digital newsroom, combining hands-on reporting with editorial judgment on breaking news, extreme weather and climate coverage. The through-line across these roles is a focus on consequential stories where environmental conditions, public safety and justice converge, and on clear, timely coverage of events that carry both immediate and long-tail impacts.
4 more environment journalists.
Alan Halaly
Alan Halaly is a water reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal who treats the Colorado River as a working system, not a backdrop, making its governance, infrastructure and risks central to his beat. He covers how policy decisions and infrastructure projects shape the region’s water future, linking high-level choices on the Colorado River, dams, mining and data centers to everyday consequences under mounting heat and growth pressures. He reports deeply on new laws, lawsuits and regulatory shifts, focusing on on-the-ground impacts. His coverage spans Colorado River cuts, Hoover Dam operations, extreme weather, heat and parks, septic system rules, workplace and public health risks, lithium and gold mines, protected landscapes, data centers, AI infrastructure and public funding. Previously he reported for metropolitan dailies, digital outlets and public media, including the Miami Herald, WUFT, The Daily Beast and Miami New Times, with work recognized by Hearst, ONA and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Alejandra Borunda
Alejandra Borunda reports on how climate change affects human health for NPR. Her work treats global warming as a direct cause of physical and mental health risks. She covers extreme heat, including undercounted deaths, lost sleep and local efforts to track heat-related fatalities. She also reports on wildfire smoke, hurricanes, disease spread such as dengue fever, trauma, stress and unequal health impacts. Her stories examine how communities protect themselves and recover, as well as practical solutions involving climate-resilient crops, agriculture and diet. Before NPR, she wrote about climate science and environmental issues for National Geographic, including glacier retreat, shade and heat inequity, and shrinking ice-fishing seasons. A former climate scientist, she combines field reporting with scientific data to connect atmospheric research to everyday risks, choices and people’s lived experiences.
Alex Lubben
Alex Lubben is an environment reporter at The Times-Picayune/The Advocate who connects climate risk to policy, industry and community change. He covers Gulf warming, flood protection, coastal restoration, wetlands litigation, industrial projects such as SpaceX’s possible expansion, invasive species and local ecosystems. His reporting tracks how law, politics and corporate decisions shape levees, drainage, marshes and long-term resilience. He also examines climate relocation, housing and labor, showing how hurricanes, floods and wildfires displace vulnerable communities and expose gaps in government systems. He works on a small environment team and brings an investigative background to document work, data analysis, legal and policy research, and field reporting. His work has appeared in VICE News, The Center for Public Integrity, The Nation, Jewish Currents and NBC News.
Alex Wigglesworth
Alex Wigglesworth reports on how climate, land use and public policy shape California communities. She covers the Inland Empire and Mojave Desert for the Los Angeles Times and is part of its environment team. Her beat includes wildfires, megadrought, extreme weather, desert development, conservation, wildlife, industrial hazards, aging infrastructure and regulatory enforcement. She has covered Western Joshua trees, desert tortoises, beaver-led restoration, toxic lead pipes, air-quality concerns after industrial fires and the effects of nuclear war on food systems. Earlier, she was a general assignment reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com. She combines breaking news with detailed reporting grounded in scientific studies, modeling and expert interviews. Her work connects fires, drought and other hazards to climate change, while examining how agencies, companies and land-use decisions affect people and ecosystems.