While it has been vastly proved that weather and climate affect migration, few studies have attempted to project future impacts or attribute past migration patterns to climate change.
In light of this, in this paper the existing projections of climate change impacts on human migration are reviewed.
A comparison reveals that projections for international migration from African countries differ by up to two orders of magnitude, while for internal migration even the direction of change is uncertain. None of the existing models adequately explain historical migration trends, limiting confidence in their forecasts.
The authors then discuss two modeling approaches: econometric models, which identify marginal climate effects but are limited for long-term projections, and total migration models, which can capture complex dynamics but are difficult to constrain.
In the end, they suggest that future improvements may come from better understanding nonlinear responses to increasingly extreme climate conditions.
Learn more about this paper here: https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2025.1570995
Reference
Schewe, J., & Beyer, R. (2025). The magnitude of climate change-induced migration: An overview of projections and a case for attribution. Frontiers in Climate, Volume 7