Meet the people moving north to escape increasingly hot summers

LONDON – Mike Coe never thought he would leave his dream home in rural Worcestershire, not far from Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace.

That was until Coe started researching the warming temperatures in the region. Coe had a job making videos for environmental activists, and ten years ago, when he spoke to his colleagues about the effects of climate change – and read the scientific papers himself – he started to get concerned.

"I realized that it was likely to get very, very hot in the British Midlands, even during my lifetime," Coe, 69, told NPR. "I said… I think we need to move to Scotland." A decade later, now Coe and his partner Lizzie Stoodley live on the Isle of Skye off Scotland's west coast.

There they have built a "Passivhaus" — a highly energy-efficient home — the second they have built. And they are glad they built their new home where they did. "Our decision to move seems to have been confirmed as being the right one, particularly this year," Coe told NPR.

Friends who still live further south have told the couple that the weather was "unbelievably hot" and "incredibly uncomfortable" this summer, as the United Kingdom experienced its hottest summer on record, with five successive heat waves and widespread drought.

But while southern regions warmed up, the weather on the Isle of Skye remained temperate. "I think there are quite a few more very hot summers I might escape by living here rather than remaining where we did," Coe said.

Others are considering the same move.

Susan Chinnery and her partner Steve Lewis, used to live near Milton Keynes, 50 miles north of London. But they began finding the summer months increasingly uncomfortable.

"I hate the hot weather," Chinnery told NPR. "I remember 2022 when Steve and I… we were actually sleeping outside on the patio because it was just too hot to sleep indoors." Like many British homes, their Victorian-era house was designed to keep in the warmth, and doesn't have air conditioning.

Lewis said that 2022 reminded him of the famously hot British summer of 1976, and he realised it was only going to get warmer. "I thought to myself, it's arrived," he told NPR. "This is the slow and inexorable decline into some new state."

Last year, Chinnery and Lewis moved to Westray, one of the Orkney Islands off northern Scotland, largely because of rising temperatures.

Melissa Terras also moved to Scotland, partly because of climate change. "When I mentioned climate change to people as one of the reasons why we were going to move north, people laughed," Terras told NPR. "They were like, 'What are you talking about?'"

In 2017, Terras moved her family from Letchworth Garden City, a town 40 miles north of London, to Edinburgh. A professor at the University of Edinburgh, Terras chose a house "up a hill," mindful of rising sea levels. She says more people are now thinking as she did several years ago.

The trend is also emerging in the housing market. Real estate agents in the Scottish Highlands told NPR that more buyers are citing cooler summers as a factor in their home-buying decisions. Recent figures show that house prices in Scotland rose year over year, while they fell in southeastern England and Greater London.

All over Europe, there are signs that climate is beginning to influence where many people are choosing to live, alongside factors including jobs, housing and the economy.

Scientists say Europe is the world's fastest warming continent. Large areas of Europe saw scorching temperatures this summer, with widespread wildfires, and at least 35,000 excess deaths thought to have been linked to the heat.

As climate change intensifies, countries around the world are grappling with more extreme impacts. At this year's U.N. General Assembly, Nepal's prime minister, Balendra Shah, called recent flash floods in his country "a warning to the world," urging a "culture of preparedness" for future climate crises.

Gaia Vince, a London-based journalist and author of Nomad Century, predicts climate change will drive hundreds of millions of people from hotter regions to more temperate areas this century.

The U.K. has felt the effects, too. "We've had five almost consecutive heat waves this year alone, and our infrastructure is built for a completely different climate — everything is built for a climate which no longer exists," Vince told NPR.

Britain will also see migration, Vince said, as people adapt their lifestyles and infrastructure. Wealthier individuals are already moving toward places such as Ireland and Scotland in search of a more livable climate, she said.

Vince expects a similar trend in the United States, with the Great Lakes region and Alaska potentially attracting people from farther south.

Some Americans are already making the move to Scotland. Jason Sorensen, a California native, moved with his wife, Christine, last year to Golspie in the Scottish Highlands.

After experiencing wildfires in Los Angeles and hot summers while working in London, Sorensen said "something broke" inside him, and he decided he wanted to live somewhere cooler.

"Between now and 2100, there really are only a few places that you could categorize as 'best of the worst' oases if things really go to hell," Sorensen told NPR. "Certain parts of Norway, the South Island of New Zealand, maybe southern Chile down near the Lake District, maybe certain parts of Alaska — and northern Scotland."

Not so long ago, people who said they wanted to live in Scotland for the weather would have been laughed at.

But for many living farther south, it seems the joke isn't quite so funny anymore.