Climate change effects increasingly drive U.S. migration

U.S. counties that would be affected by a six-foot sea-level rise are in blue, based on a 2020 study. Inland counties are shaded in red according to how many migrants they would likely receive from coastal areas. (PLOS ONE map)

"Worsening climate effects, including heat waves, wildfires, floods, droughts, and sea-level rise, are leading a growing number of Americans to have second thoughts about where they are living and to decide to move to places that are perceived to be less exposed to these impacts . . . such as New England or the Appalachian Mountains. Researchers say this phenomenon will intensify in the coming decades," Jon Hurdle reports for Yale Environment 360. Some are forced to move because of current or frequent threats, while others choose to move before disasters force them to.

The phenomenon will become increasingly common in the coming years, and temperate Northern states will see the most incoming migration, according to researchers like Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of real estate in Tulane University's architecture school. "Keenan, who studies the intersection of climate change adaptation and the built environment, estimated that 50 million Americans could eventually move within the country to regions such as New England or the Upper Midwest in search of a haven from severe climate impacts," Hurdle reports. "He predicted that migration driven by increasingly uninhabitable coastal areas is likely to happen sooner rather than later, citing the latest federal estimate that U.S. coastal sea levels will rise by as much as a foot by 2050. Another projection, by Matthew Hauer, an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State University, is that 13.1 million Americans will relocate because of sea-level rise alone by 2100, based on projections that seas along the U.S. coast will rise by an average of 1.8 meters — nearly six feet — by then."

However, not everyone is as concerned about climate change (or at least not concerned enough for it to change where they move), since many Americans have moved to disaster-prone states such as Texas and Florida during the pandemic, Hurdle reports.