Where America’s Migrants Will Go As Sea Level Rises

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13 million U.S. coastal residents are expected to be displaced by 2100 due to sea level rise. Researchers are starting to predict where they’ll go.

When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita swept through Louisiana in 2005, cities like Houston, Dallas, and Baton Rouge took in hundreds of thousands of displaced residents—many of whom eventually stayed in those cities a year later. Where evacuees have moved since hasn’t been closely tracked, but data from those initial relocations are helping researchers predict how sea level rise might drive migration patterns in the future.

Climate experts expect some 13 million coastal residents in the U.S. to be displaced by the end of this century. A new PLOS One study gives some indication of where climate migrants might go.

“A lot of cities not at risk of sea of level rise will experience the effect of it,” says Bistra Dilkina, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California, who led the study. “This will require an adjustment in terms of the [increased] demand on the cities’ infrastructure.”

Dilkina and her team used migration data from the Internal Revenue Service to analyze how people moved across the U.S. between 2004 and 2014. Movement from seven Katrina and Rita-affected counties to unaffected counties between 2005 and 2006 was categorized as climate-driven migration. Researchers then combined that analysis with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projections on the effects of sea level rise on coastal counties, and trained a machine-learning model to predict where coastal populations will move when forced to leave their homes—and how that, in turn, affects the migration of non-coastal residents.

Blue indicates counties where flooding will displace residents if sea levels rise by six feet by 2100. Counties in shades of pink and red will see higher-than-average migration, with the darker shades representing larger population increases. (PLOS One)
In the worst-case scenario, in which sea levels rise by six feet by 2100, the resulting map shows portions of almost all counties on the East and West Coasts, and along the Gulf of Mexico, under water […]

Via https://www.citylab.com/environment/2020/02/climate-change-migration-map-sea-level-rise-coastal-cities/605440/

9 thoughts on “Where America’s Migrants Will Go As Sea Level Rises”

  3. Don’t worry about it. Barack Obama’s election was the event that marked the time when the oceans would begin to recede, he said it himself He also bought a nice mansion on the coast to prove his confidence in that 2008 prediction. Of course, I jest. But Climate ‘whatever you call it’ science is more propaganda for redistribution of wealth than anything to do with science. I believe there are quotes from high level EU bureaucrats saying just that. How can we the People keep bending over for the latest mass-hysteria du jour and keep taking it over and over and over again, loudly proclaiming, “Thank you sir! May we have another?”

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    • I live on the coast here in the South Pacific, Boomrx, and we are experiencing both higher tide levels and subsidence of coastal properties. In Oakura higher tide levels are washing away the ancient Maori coastal cemetery and people who walk on the beach are frequently confronted with human skeletal parts.

      Likewise we are facing an influx of Pacific Island refugees who can no longer grow food because rising tide levels have infiltrated their water table, which means their soils are too saline to grow food.

      It’s not something you read about in the mainstream media, but if you talk to people who actually live in coastal areas you will hear similar stories. And the insurance companies clearly believe it’s real.

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  4. I hope that you haven’t spent too much time on this subject, as it isn’t going to be happening. This is turned out to be another Leftist pseudo-science hoax..

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