The ocean has always drawn people in. There’s something magnetic about waking up to salt air, watching tides shift, feeling that particular stillness before a wave breaks. But in 2026, choosing to live near the coast is no longer just a lifestyle preference. It’s a calculated decision that increasingly needs to account for science, elevation data, and long-range climate risk.
The numbers are not reassuring for many popular shorelines. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that global sea levels reached a record high in 2023, rising about 20 to 23 centimetres since 1880. The rate of rise has more than doubled in the last decade compared to the 1990s. For anyone planning a coastal retreat over the next 15 years, that trajectory demands serious attention. The five locations explored in this guide are not immune to change, but they stand on considerably more defensible ground than most.
Why 2040 Is the Relevant Horizon
By 2040, sea levels are expected to be 10 to 17 inches higher than 2000 levels, according to the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact’s Unified Sea Level Rise Projection for Southeast Florida. That framing matters because it’s not a distant-century abstraction. It sits inside standard mortgage and infrastructure planning windows, making it the most practically relevant timeframe for anyone buying or developing coastal property today.
High tide flooding is increasingly common due to long-term sea level rise, and as sea level rise continues, it no longer takes severe weather to cause flooding along the coast. This flooding is increasingly disrupting life in coastal communities, which are home to nearly two-fifths of the U.S. population and support more than 54 million jobs. The window for acting on this information is shorter than most people assume.
What Makes a Coastal Location Genuinely Resilient
Elevation above sea level is the most obvious factor, but it’s far from the only one. Geology, storm surge exposure, groundwater behavior, and governance quality all determine how a coastal zone will actually perform as seas rise. A key factor in determining whether a city or country will disappear is not necessarily the rate of sea level rise, but more the capacity of that city or country to address the problem and develop long-term defenses.
Local factors mean that cities will experience sea level rise at different paces, and cities on the east coast of the U.S., including New York City and Miami, are particularly vulnerable, along with major cities in Southeast Asia such as Bangkok and Shanghai. Choosing a retreat, then, is partly about geography and partly about the quality of the plan a community has already put in place. Both matter enormously.
Retreat 1: The Pacific Northwest’s Elevated Shorelines, Oregon and Washington
The Oregon and Washington coastlines offer something increasingly rare: rocky, elevated sea cliffs and relatively stable tectonic shelf geology. Much of the coastline sits well above current tidal reach, with towns set back from the waterfront behind natural bluffs. Unlike the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, this region is not subject to the same accelerated sea level rise rates tied to ocean circulation changes.
U.S. east coast cities are witnessing sea level rise that is two to three times faster than the global average. The Pacific Northwest escapes this regional amplification. It does face seismic risks from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and any honest resilience assessment must include that variable. Still, for pure flood risk through 2040, elevated Pacific Northwest shoreline communities compare favorably with almost any other coastal option in North America.
Retreat 2: The Azores, Portugal
The Azores archipelago in the mid-Atlantic sits on volcanic basalt foundations that rise steeply from the ocean floor, giving most of its inhabited communities significant natural elevation above sea level. The islands’ geography provides a natural buffer against the kind of gradual tidal inundation that threatens flat coastal plains. Storm exposure is real, but groundwater intrusion from slowly rising seas is a far smaller near-term threat here than on continental low-lying coasts.
The likely range of global mean sea level rise for the end of the century for all climate scenarios is between 0.4 and 1 metre. For high-elevation Atlantic island communities, that range represents an entirely manageable challenge over the next 15 years. The Azores have been working steadily on renewable energy infrastructure and sustainable water management, building a governance foundation that matters as much as raw elevation for long-range resilience.
Retreat 3: Coastal Norway’s Fjord Communities
Norwegian fjord communities benefit from some of the most favorable coastal geophysics on Earth. The land itself is still rising due to post-glacial rebound, the geological process by which land that was compressed under massive ice sheets slowly bounces back after the ice retreats. In some parts of Norway, this isostatic uplift is actually offsetting a portion of sea level rise, creating a genuinely different risk profile than most of the world’s coastlines.
Regional differences in sea level arise from ocean circulation patterns, such as the Gulf Stream, which are driven by a range of physical processes varying across space and time and can cause significant departures from the long-term global mean rate of sea-level rise. Norway’s northern and fjord coastlines benefit from both geological rebound and favorable regional ocean dynamics. The country also has well-funded, technically sophisticated coastal management institutions, a combination that is rare and valuable.
Retreat 4: New Zealand’s South Island West Coast
New Zealand has become a notable case study in forward-thinking coastal governance, having incorporated managed retreat into its national adaptation planning framework. New Zealand’s first national adaptation plan includes nature-based and hard-engineering solutions such as wetlands and sea walls, as well as upgrades to properties and infrastructure to withstand more extreme weather events and initiatives to educate and prepare communities for climate risks.
The South Island’s west coast, characterized by elevated terrain, fjord geography, and comparatively sparse development, combines low flood exposure with a national governance framework actually designed around future coastal risk. Some communities in Tuvalu and Fiji are already implementing relocation or managed retreat from their coastlines, and New Zealand itself has been active in supporting these wider Pacific adaptation discussions. That institutional awareness translates into better local planning at home as well.
Retreat 5: The Northern Adriatic Coast of Croatia, Elevated Interior Sections
Croatia’s Dalmatian coast is one of Europe’s most visually dramatic shorelines, with limestone karst topography that rises steeply from the sea. The elevated interior sections of the Adriatic coastal zone, particularly around the Istrian peninsula and northern Dalmatia, sit at elevations that provide considerable protection from near-term sea level scenarios. The karst geology does require careful attention to groundwater behavior, as porous rock can transmit water in unexpected ways, but the flood risk profile through 2040 remains comparatively low.
Strategic retreat involves the purposeful relocation of settlements, households, and infrastructure from a risk location to a non-risk location where they are permanently resettled, and can be applied in pre- and post-disaster settings to reduce exposure to natural hazards when structural measures are too costly. Croatia’s EU membership means it operates within European climate adaptation frameworks that increasingly require forward-looking risk assessments for coastal development, adding a layer of regulatory backstop that informal markets lack.
The Cities and Coastlines to Actively Avoid
Identifying resilient retreats is only half the picture. The other half is understanding which places carry disproportionate risk through 2040. According to C40 Cities analysis, the total urban population at risk from sea level rise, if emissions don’t go down, could number over 800 million people living in 570 cities by 2050. That concentration of future risk is not evenly distributed.
In terms of susceptibility to flooding, Florida appears certain to be the state hit hardest, with Climate Central’s research showing 36 of the 50 U.S. cities most vulnerable to coastal flooding located in that state. In 2023, the East Asia and Pacific region accounted for the highest number of people displaced due to floods and storms, totalling nine million, with the most affected countries including China, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Indonesia. These patterns are likely to intensify, not reverse.
What the Science Actually Says About Adaptation
Resilience is not just about where you choose to be. It is also about how much time, money, and institutional will a place is spending to manage its risks. Adaptation implemented now could avoid more than 3 billion dollars in structural losses regionally from tidal inundation in 2040, and could also protect millions in tax revenue losses from storm events through 2070. The economic case for proactive investment is clear, even in purely financial terms.
A slower rate of sea level rise enables greater opportunities for adapting, but although ambitious adaptation will not necessarily eradicate end-century risk, it will help to buy time in many locations and help lay a robust foundation for adaptation beyond 2100. The takeaway for anyone choosing a coastal retreat is straightforward: pick a place with the physical geography and the institutional capacity to keep buying that time effectively.
The Role of Nature-Based Defenses
Beyond hard infrastructure like seawalls, the coastlines that hold up best tend to be those with intact natural buffers. Mangroves, coral reefs, salt marshes, and kelp forests all dissipate wave energy and absorb storm surge in ways that engineered structures cannot fully replicate. Conserving marine and coastal ecosystems is an effective nature-based solution to adapt to the impacts of sea-level rise, and this approach includes the sustainable management of coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass.
Added pressures on coastal ecosystems currently threaten their potential to keep pace with sea-level rise and affect their resilience to storm impacts, threatening their future effectiveness for flood and erosion reduction. The five retreats highlighted in this guide all feature relatively intact natural coastal ecosystems compared to heavily developed alternatives, and that matters more than most property buyers currently factor into their decision-making.
Making the Decision: Principles Over Predictions
No article can guarantee which specific property will stay dry through 2040. Projections carry uncertainty ranges, and local subsidence, drainage infrastructure, and storm patterns all introduce variables that broad data cannot fully capture. What science can do is narrow the field considerably. Global sea level rise is accelerating, with 2024 recording an increase of 5.9 millimetres, relative to a mean annual average rate of 3.4 millimetres per year between 1993 and 2024, due to accelerating land ice loss and exceptional rates of atmospheric and ocean warming.
Settlements retreated from coastlines in 56 percent of coastal subnational regions globally between 1992 and 2019, remained stable in 28 percent, and moved closer to coastlines in 16 percent of these regions. That shift is already underway, quietly, in the data. The retreats described in this guide are not escapes from reality. They are grounded, evidence-informed choices about where to face that reality from a more defensible position. The ocean isn’t going anywhere. Knowing which shore to stand on is the whole question.
<p>The post The “Water Sign” Guide to Coastal Resilience: 5 Retreats That Won’t Be Underwater by 2040 first appeared on Travelbinger.</p>