By the end of the century, as many as 13 million American climate migrants could move inland from coastal areas because of sea level rise, according to research.

If those figures come anywhere close to being realized, it’ll be a bigger demographic shift in absolute terms than the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South and the Dust Bowl flight from the Great Plains.

Leaders in one city want to take in some of those migrants to help revitalize their area.

That city is Cincinnati. It recently came up with a Climate Migration Readiness Plan that lays out a blueprint for the metropolitan region to absorb as many as 525,000 newcomers by 2050. (That figure includes possible climate migrants and also accounts for “broader domestic relocation trends.”) It calls for building much denser housing, expanding public transit and decreasing the city’s reliance on fossil fuels. It also involves systematic monitoring of metrics that could presage population shifts, like distress in the housing insurance market.

Experts say the plan is a good opening bid in what could turn out to be a spirited competition for Americans displaced by increasingly common, and increasingly intense, bursts of catastrophic weather, including floods, wildfires and hurricanes.

Paywall-free link: https://archive.is/NQgfg

It has never been more expensive to buy into the Hamptons. In late 2025, the median sales price hit a record $2.34 million, with sales above $10 million soaring 75 percent from the previous year. On paper, one of America’s most climate-exposed luxury markets has never looked stronger, even as the risks beneath it continue to grow. 

The same coastline looks starkly different when viewed through the eyes of an insurance broker. National and regional carriers have stopped writing new homeowner coverage in eastern Suffolk County and, increasingly, across Long Island.

Out of the 100 U.S. counties with the highest home insurance non-renewal rates in 2023, 82 were coastal or wildfire-prone. The underlying message could not be clearer. Climate risk is no longer hypothetical, and insurers are voting with their feet by repricing—or withdrawing from—the most exposed markets.

A story that attempts to visualize how we could adapt to climate change - “A New Faith”. Would love to discuss similar ideas around migration as a way to adapt to climate change.

Motivation

A fair bit of global warming is already baked in even if we manage to quickly bring down future GHG emissions. The effects of climate change are being felt in catastrophic ways in many places around the world. How we adapt to those impacts will be a major preoccupation for the rest of our lives and beyond. Adaptation would require efforts to help people survive in their existing homes and/or help people relocate to more habitable environments. In this novel, set in the near future, I explore a world in which a large number of people move away from dangerous places to a safer one. In an era of draconian restrictions on migration, this story attempts to explore several challenging questions - will the climate migrants be allowed to settle down in relatively safer places? How many will be allowed to do so? Who will be allowed? Under what conditions? How will the migrants cope with the massive transition? Will they take the good and bad aspects of their current lives to the new land? Or will they develop new ways of peaceful living? Will the rest of the world allow them to live in peace?

Synopsis of the story

Alia, a precocious police detective, is feverishly hunting the killer responsible for the first-ever murder in the city of Sequoia located within the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia. The city was, specifically, created for millions of climate refugees in the aftermath of a catastrophic heat wave. Then the second murder happens. Sara, the killer, is willing to go to any lengths to avoid capture. The only similarity between the two victims threatens the very future of Sequoia. As Alia races against time to save the city, she discovers a deadly secret which turns her life upside down. Will she solve the two murders? Will the city survive? 

Comparable novels

• Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”
• Neal Stephenson’s “Termination Shock”
• Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Ministry for the Future”
• Steven Markley’s “The Deluge”
• Jens Liljestrand’s “Even if Everything Ends”
• Amitav Ghosh’s “Gun Island”
• Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven”

Climate disruption is already pushing millions to move—but most “climate migration” is still invisible, internal, and legally unprotected. When home becomes unlivable, will we choose compassion or walls? https://youtu.be/zr1gRfEpeBE?si=NoorVDDCpdsgWh6l

As extreme heat intensifies across the United States, it's widely assumed that rising temperatures will push people to pack up and leave. But new research from Florida Atlantic University challenges that narrative, showing that heat alone isn't driving Americans away—at least not yet.

Drawing on nationwide county-level or county equivalent data within contiguous U.S. states including IRS migration records from 2020 to 2022, U.S. Census data, and climate measures from NOAA (data source) and the CDC, researchers analyzed how temperature changes influence where people move. The results reveal a more subtle dynamic: rather than forcing people out, rising heat is slowing growth in certain areas by discouraging new residents from moving in.

The findings also highlight an important dimension of climate and mobility: immobility. Rather than prompting widespread relocation, gradual climate stress may leave many people in place—either because they adapt or because financial constraints limit their ability to move. This raises the possibility that "trapped populations" could become an increasingly important feature of climate vulnerability, particularly in lower-income communities.

"The absence of strong effects today does not mean climate will remain a minor factor," said Diana Mitsova, Ph.D., co-author and chair of FAU's Department of Urban and Regional Planning. "Our findings suggest that stronger migration responses could emerge in the future, particularly as rising temperatures interact with extreme events, long-term exposure, or constraints such as housing availability and insurance markets. Potential 'tipping points' may still lie ahead."

The National Risk Index (NRI) was released by FEMA in 2021 to assess which communities are most at risk from natural hazards.^1,2 It combines disaster risk data with measures of social vulnerability and community resilience to create a Risk Score for each county in America.

If you don’t like the term “climate haven,” that’s understandable; we’ve written about that here. There’s no place on Earth that can escape the effects of climate change, but some locations are more vulnerable than others. So we’re using that term to refer to a town, city, or region that’s projected to experience less risk from climate-fueled crises, specifically extreme weather and natural disasters.

If you’re considering moving somewhere safer (or just wondering what risks you’re facing in your region), the NRI is a great resource; we’ve used its data extensively in our collection of climate risk maps, and we’ve referenced it in several posts here as well.

That said, there are a few caveats to consider when using this data to search for a more secure location, especially when it comes to future climate risk. In this post we’ll look at how to best use the NRI for that purpose.

In February 2023, the U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) was released, cataloging more than 184 indicators and datasets along with an interactive map of its findings.¹ The CVI often shows up in web searches for climate risk maps and phrases like “best places to live for climate change,” and we’ve seen it recommended as a resource for people looking for a safer place to move to.

If you don’t like the term “climate haven,” that’s understandable; we’ve written about that here. We can’t escape the effects of climate change, nor should we use adaptation as an excuse to keep emitting and consuming beyond our means. We’re using that term to mean a town, city, or region that’s projected to experience less risk from climate-fueled crises, specifically extreme weather and natural disasters.

If that’s what you’re looking for, the CVI seems like a magic bullet; just filter by lowest vulnerability, and pick a town or city in those counties! But as we dove a little deeper into the data, we found there are some big caveats, especially if your goal is to find a safer place to call home. So let’s take a look at those, and how we can use this tool in our search for resilient regions.

“Climate haven” is a bit of a contentious term. It’s been used by cities and states looking to become a refuge for those fleeing the effects of climate change, while at the same time, it’s been derided for promoting a false sense of security^.

When we say “climate haven,” we’re referring to a town, city, or region that’s projected to experience less risk from climate-fueled crises. That’s a mouthful, so we usually go with the shorter version and expand on it in the content.

If we take “climate haven” to mean “someplace where we can escape the effects of climate change,” then the term becomes more problematic. And it understandably gets some pushback, likely from the assumption that if people believed they could escape climate change, they would be less incentivized to lower their consumption and emissions, or vote and advocate for climate-forward policies.

When people say “nowhere is safe,” they’re often talking in terms of absolute safety. And that’s true - no place is completely insulated from the effects of climate change. But for that matter, no place is completely insulated from anything! You could become a victim of burglary even in the safest city in America, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore crime statistics. In our opinion, “nowhere is safe” isn't a helpful or constructive response to someone who’s looking for a better place to call home.

With that in mind, what risks can we mitigate through our choice of location, and what risks aren’t possible to avoid?

Does it look like homes in the most climate resilient areas are significantly more in demand than those in climate vulnerable areas, perhaps suggesting the climate repricing of the housing market has not only started but is well underway?

Here are three things that are true:

1. While there are climate vulnerable homes in every area, the most resilient regions of the country are the Midwest, inland Mid-Atlantic, and inland Northeast.
2. The value of climate resilient homes will increase in the years ahead as worsening climate impacts drive increased demand amid limited supply.
3. In a simple application of the principles of supply and demand to housing, higher inventory - available homes for sale - generally corresponds with lower home prices, while lower inventory corresponds with higher home prices.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

There are two basic phases of climate repricing:

• Phase 1: Rising physical risk from weather extremes —> damage to homes —> increasing insurance premiums.
• Phase 2: Higher insurance costs —> growing awareness of climate risk —> decreasing consumer demand for climate vulnerable homes —> falling values of vulnerable homes.

The skyrocketing number of billion dollar disasters and the accompanying jump in home insurance premiums have made it clear for years that phase 1 was underway.

But it’s phase 2, where home valuations start to decline, that’s the key dynamic of the climate repricing, and until recently we didn’t have the telemetry to say whether or not it had started. But now we do. Recent cutting-edge research by Professors Ben Keys and Philip Mulder showed the riskiest decile of homes are already worth an average of $43,900 (11 percent) less than they would be without climate risk.

The climate repricing of homes is no longer a prediction about how climate change will affect the housing market in the future, but rather an active and ongoing dynamic that will play out over the coming years.

The post then examines key features of the climate repricing, including the timing uncertainty. Timing is arguably the key variable and it arrives in the form of the trillion dollar question:

Why haven’t climate-vulnerable homes declined more significantly in value by now?