Global warming to boost poverty and drive more ‘climate refugees’ to Europe, says study

Europe could see a surge in “climate refugees” as global warming increases poverty and hardship elsewhere in the world, scientists said on Thursday.

Experts have long warned that rising temperatures and extreme weather could increase the number of people in poor countries seeking refuge in richer, more temperate nations, but the phenomenon has previously only been studied at a small scale.

In a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, researchers examined asylum applications in the EU between 2000 and 2014 from 103 countries around the world. This preceded the spike in migration to Europe from war-torn countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in 2015 and 2016 that prompted a political backlash against migrants in many European countries.

“We find a statistically significant relationship between fluctuations in asylum applications and weather anomalies,” the US-based authors wrote of the 15-year period.

They concluded that the number of applications increased the more a country of origin’s average temperature diverged from 20C (68F) – the best temperature for growing crops. Higher temperatures were more likely to increase the numbers than lower temperatures, they found.

“It’s the first study that draws a link between temperature and international migration on a global scale, and finds a link,” said Jacob Schewe, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany who was not involved in the study.