13 million along US coast could see homes swamped by 2100, study finds
▻http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/14/climate-change-us-coast-homes-2100-great-migration
Research led by the University of Georgia has provided the first glimpse of how demographic changes in America will place greater numbers of people at the frontline of sea level rises. In a severe scenario involving a 6ft (1.8m) rise in sea levels by 2100, fuelled by the gradual collapse of the Antarctic ice sheets, a total of 13.1 million people would risk seeing their homes inundated.
A less dramatic sea level rise of 0.9m, still considered at the upper end of IPCC projections, would risk land occupied by 4.2 million people being claimed by the sea.
[...] The paper warns that finding new land for displaced people will be “problematic” as well as expensive, citing relocations of Alaskan villages that have cost as much as an estimated $1m per resident.
[...] “#Adaption will be an option, such as deploying critical infrastructure, raising buildings and roads. If we don’t do anything, the migration will mimic the Great Migration from the south to the north, over similar timescales.
“At the moment, roads and hospitals are typically being built in areas without these future projections in mind. In the future, this will need to be a factor in where we deploy roads, hospitals, people and so on.”