Extreme weather exacerbated by our overheating planet is behind a rise in undocumented migration between the United States and Mexico, according to a new study.
What's happening?
Extreme weather has hit Mexico this year in the form of a prolonged drought and heatwaves. Chihuahua, a northern Mexico state, has been enduring a drought that has lasted nearly two years and has left farmers in the region at a loss of what to do next. A heatwave in spring forced officials to implement rolling power outages in Mexico City.
These are two examples of extreme weather, made worse by our warming world, that researchers say is behind a surge of more people from Mexico migrating to the United States.
Scientists focused on nearly 4,000 undocumented people who crossed the border from Mexico into the U.S. for the first time. Researchers analyzed Mexico's daily climate data and the responses from nearly 50,000 people to surveys given over a 25-year period from 1992 to 2018 for their study.
"As the world's climate continues to change, human populations are exposed to increasingly severe and extreme weather conditions that can promote migration," the authors of the study wrote, per EcoWatch. "The findings … suggest that extreme weather conditions, which are likely to increase with climate change, promote clandestine mobility across borders and, thus, expose migrants to risks associated with crossing dangerous terrain."
Why is this migration study important?
Mexico has seen its share of extreme weather this year, while the United States is on pace to set a record for billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. Through the first day of November this year, there were 24 confirmed disasters in the country that had losses of at least $1 billion. That amount has nearly tripled the yearly number of such disasters, on average, experienced by the country between 1980 and 2023. It also means 2024 is well on its way to breaking the record of 28 billion-dollar weather or climate disasters seen last year.
While our overheating planet might not be the cause of all these disasters, our warming climate has been increasing the frequency and intensity of many extreme weather events not just in the United States but around the world. A World Weather Attribution study found that our warming world intensified the 10 deadliest extreme weather events of the past 20 years.
What's being done about extreme weather being intensified by our warming world?
Using our voices to raise awareness of how heat-trapping gases are raising the Earth's temperature and supercharging many forms of severe weather is important. Exploring critical climate issues and their impacts on our planet, and talking to family and friends about them, is a good place to start.
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