Estimating the impact of climate change on global migration | Sol Hsiang

Sol Hsiang will be presenting a paper at the RSS event on Wednesday 06 May: ‘Estimating the Impact of Climate Change on Global Migration’ (Suraj Nair, Guanghua Chi, Nicholas Depsky, Joshua Blumenstock and Sol Hsiang)

Solomon Hsiang directs the Global Policy Laboratory at Stanford University, where his team integrates social science, natural science, and data science to better understand how we can effectively manage global resources.

Hsiang is currently a Professor of Global Environmental Policy at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, a co-founder and Co-Director of the Climate Impact Lab, co-founder of mosaiks.org, Research Associate at the NBER, and a National Geographic Explorer. Hsiang is also currently co-editing the Handbook of the Economics of Climate Change and co-leads the Aerial History Project. 

Abstract

Climate change is widely expected to reshape global patterns of migration, but the nature of those effects are not well understood. We study 3 billion social media users across 180 countries to estimate the impact of long-run climate on present-day migration globally at the level of a 0.25◦ × 0.25◦ pixel. The response is nonlinear and unevenly distributed: extreme cold and hot temperatures generally increase shorter distance internal (within country) migration, but heat reduces international migration. In the poorest regions, extreme heat reduces all forms of mobility. Using probabilistic simulations to project these impacts into the future, we estimate that each +1◦C increase in global temperatures will internally displace roughly 340 million individuals by 2100, while also inducing widespread immobility in large parts of the world by 175 million individuals per +1◦C. In contrast, we project a decline in net international migrants by roughly 68 million individuals per +1◦C. Holding the distribution of destinations fixed, we project that warming will reduce the number of international arrivals across Europe, North America, and Australia but substantially increase arrivals of internally displaced migrants. Our findings suggest that policies targeting migration caused by climate change should primarily focus on managing internal displacement, rather than international flows.

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