Key Findings

• Since 2010, over 250,000 Americans have left the counties most at risk for climate change; over 75% of those moves took place in the last five years
• An estimated 21,000 people relocated to escape climate change in 2020
• People fleeing climate change were over four times more likely to leave the state (64%) compared to those moving for other reasons (14%)
• Moves out of counties at risk for extreme heat (45%) and droughts (37%) accounted for 82% of all climate change-related moves in the United States
• Almost 10 million people were displaced by natural disasters in the United States from 2008 through 2020, according to Global Displacement Database

 

“The great climate migration is already here,” reads the headline of this New York Times article from July 2020. “Climate migration will reshape America,” reads another. 

True as those statements may ring, many of them are based on projections looking ahead to the next 50-80 years. But how much climate-related migration is already happening in the United States — today?

In our estimate, at least 220,000 Americans moved due to climate change-related events within the last decade, with over 75% of those moves taking place in just the last five years.

This is on top of the 9.9 million Americans who, according to the figures from Global Internal Displacement Database, were forced to leave their homes due to natural disasters like storms, floods, and fires since 2008.

Putting aside any political discussions about whether natural disasters are the direct consequence of climate change, let’s look at the data on climate migration in America in 2022.

Moving for Better Weather OR Fleeing Climate Change? How We Counted ‘Climate Change Moves’

When filling out the responses that make up the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, a survey that reaches about 60,000 American households each year, Americans who moved within the past year were asked to check off a primary reason for their move. 

Among the listed options on the survey is “change of climate” — which would make for a tidy data point to estimate climate migration, if it weren’t for its lack of definition. As it’s currently written, this answer seemingly applies both to people escaping the increasingly unbearable heat in some parts of the U.S. (e.g., Arizona) and people chasing the heat (e.g., people moving from Maine to Florida).

To avoid conflating these two motives, we focused our analysis only on the counties designated by ProPublica’s report as “most at risk for climate change”. These are areas where listing “change of climate” as a reason for moving, in our view, is more likely to mean  “escaping climate change”, and not more typical fairweather moving data.

 

“The projected number of people leaving the most-at-risk counties is 40,000-50,000 per year. These are moves that otherwise would have no reason to happen.”

 

Then, by analyzing the moves out from these counties using extra data from the American Community Survey (a survey reaching 1-2 million Americans each year), we were able to more confidently estimate the motivations of people who both moved away and listed “change of climate” on the U.S. Census survey as their primary reason for moving.

Ten Years of Climate Change Moves: A Quarter of a Million Moves Since 2010

Since 2010, about a quarter of a million (or ~251,000) Americans who cited “change of climate” as their main reason for leaving originated in counties most at risk for climate change. These are counties that, according to the report by ProPublica, have the highest risk levels for issues such as:

• Extreme heat
• “Wet bulb” conditions (i.e., extreme heat plus humidity)
• Large fires
• Sea level rises
• Declining farm crop yields
• Economic damages due to weather

Based on the shape of the chart above, the year 2017 really stands out. This is likely because several notable hurricanes, including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, all took place that year.

While their impacts were widely felt, they likely affected many counties that were in fact already at risk for climate change; these places are frequently coastal counties where sea levels are predicted to rise, as well as counties in the Southeast, where the climate is getting hotter and hotter each year.

 

“…counties in Texas are the most frequently occuring origin points for climate change-related moves.”

 

Extrapolating from the 2010-2021 trend, presuming current climate change patterns persist at a minimum of their current rates (as they are predicted to do so), our forecast suggests moves made due to climate change will become more common. The projected number of people leaving the most-at-risk counties is 40,000-50,000 per year. These are moves that otherwise would have no reason to happen.

Torrid Texas: Counties in Lone Star State Top List of Climate Move Origins

Of the 460 counties we identified as most at risk for climate change, nearly 47% are in Texas, with the biggest climate risk in most of them (124 out of 203) being “extreme heat”.

Especially given there are so many, counties in Texas are the most frequently occuring origin points for climate change-related moves. Seven out of the top 10 counties with the highest number of people moving out for climate change reasons are in the Lone Star State.

Where to? The Most Popular Destinations of Climate Change Moves

As per our estimated climate change-related moves, people moving to escape recent weather trends are four times more likely to cross state lines as compared to moves made for all other reasons combined (64% vs 14%). This makes sense, as it takes a great distance to reach an area where the climate is substantially different from the place people are leaving behind.

We know that a considerable number of moves due to climate change originate from Texas, but where are they headed?

If they stay in America, it’s Arizona, it turns out. Maricopa County (where Phoenix is located) is the destination for 2% of all climate change moves, with Los Angeles County in California being in a close second, representing 1.9% of all climate change-based moves. (Given Arizona’s famous heat, it’s safe to predict there are many mitigating factors for a destination beyond solely climate change.)

Elsewhere, we see counties around big cities like Seattle (King County, WA), Colorado Springs (El Paso County, CO), and Chicago (Cook County, IL) — all of which received around 1% of all climate change based moves.

At the state level, California edges out other states, receiving 10% of all climate change moves from most at-risk counties. Texas, despite being an origin point of many climate change defectors, still received 9.2% of all new arrivals within the last decade. 

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Consistent with the findings in recent reports, what we’re seeing in our data doesn’t illustrate a mass exodus of Americans from states like Texas, Arizona, or Louisiana toward more climate-temperate regions like the Northeast or the Pacific Northwest. 

Instead, people continue to move into areas like Austin, TX and Los Angeles, CA, where more imminent prospects of a better-paid job and/or comfortable living outweigh the distant risk of climate change-driven disruption to livelihood that will take place decades into the future.

This suggests that whether people realize it or not, they are probably moving for climate-related reasons… yet may be at risk to repeat their actions based on where they are going.

Even still, a Redfin survey from last year found that almost half (49%) of Americans will be factoring climate change and its effects into their deciding where to move next. 

But as the adverse effects of climate change are yet to manifest themselves in ways that would make some of America significantly less liveable, climate change remains a minor consideration in the grand scheme of American internal migration — for now.

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Methodology and Sources

Explore data by yourself by looking for climate move stats on each of the 460 most-at-risk counties for climate change we included in our analysis from the following places:

• Counties most at risk for climate change: ProPublica (counties rated 9 or 10 for at least one of the following climate change risks: heat, wet bulb, very large fires, farm crop yields, and economic damages)

• Reasons for Moving: Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) of the Current Population Survey (CPS) via IPUMS

• County-to-county moves, origins and destinations: American Community Survey via Census Bureau API

Illustrations by Jiaqi Zhou