According to new data analyzed by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, warming temperatures, rising seas and changing rainfall will profoundly reshape the way people have lived in North America for centuries.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers modeled the human climate “niche”: the regions where temperature and precipitation have been most suitable for humans to live in over the past 6,000 years.
In the United States, that niche today blankets the heart of the country, from the Atlantic seaboard through northern Texas and Nebraska, and the California coast.
But as the climate warms, the niche could shift drastically northward. Under even a moderate carbon emissions scenario (known as RCP 4.5), by 2070 much of the Southeast becomes less suitable and the niche shifts toward the Midwest.
In the case of extreme warming (represented as RCP 8.5), the niche moves sharply toward Canada, leaving much of the lower half of the U.S. too hot or dry for the type of climate humans historically have lived in. Both scenarios suggest massive upheavals in where Americans currently live and grow food.