Scientists trying to predict the consequences of climate change say that they see few safe havens from the storms, floods and droughts that are sure to intensify over the coming decades. But some regions, they add, will fare much better than others.
Forget most of California and the Southwest (drought, wildfires). Ditto for much of the East Coast and Southeast (heat waves, hurricanes, rising sea levels). Washington, D.C., for example, may well be a flood zone by 2100, according to an estimate released last week.
Instead, consider Anchorage. Or even, perhaps, Detroit.
‘If you do not like it hot and do not want to be hit by a hurricane, the options of where to go are very limited,” said Camilo Mora, a geography professor at the University of Hawaii and lead author of a paper published in Nature last year predicting that unprecedented high temperatures will become the norm worldwide by 2047.
Under any model of climate change, scientists say, most of the country will look and feel drastically different in 2050, 2100 and beyond, even […]