Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Flooding in the Marshall Islands in 2014 caused extensive damage and left hundreds homeless 
 
 About 1,000 Bikini islanders have applied to relocate to the United States as rising seas threaten their adopted home. 
 
 The residents were moved from their Pacific atoll as result of atomic bomb tests in the 1940s. 
 
 But their new home, on another of the Marshall Islands, is struggling against huge tides and increasing storms. 
 
 The islanders have now asked Washington to change the terms of a trust fund to allow them settle in the US. 
 
 In 1946 several hundred islanders were moved from Bikini Atoll by the US government, which wanted to test atomic weapons on the remote atoll. 
 
 The people of Bikini came back to us and asked us to take this proposal to the US Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister, Marshall Islands 
 
 Some 23 nuclear tests were conducted including the huge Bravo hydrogen bomb, the largest weapon detonated at that time by the US. 
 
 King tides 
 
 The islanders moved to a nearby island in the Marshall chain called Kili in 1948. 
 
 Under an agreement with the US, a resettlement trust fund was eventually established to help the Bikini residents. This would pay for construction of homes within the Marshall Islands. 
 
 But now the islanders say that their homes are being swamped by the increased ingress of sea water during king tides. 
 
 There was widespread flooding in 2011 and again this year. Salt is also creeping up from beneath Kili, threatening agriculture and water supplies. In the early part of this year the island's runway was entirely flooded, cutting off the residents. 
 
 "The people of Bikini came back to us and asked us to take this proposal to the US, to request the resettlement trust fund be used to settle people in the US not just the Marshall Islands," said Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands. 
 
 "We have not seen the final text of the legislation but the request that went in was on the basis of Kili being uninhabitable because of climate change." 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Bikini Atoll was used for extensive atomic bomb tests by the US from 1946 
 
 The US Department of the Interior is supporting the islanders and is now proposing legislation in Congress that would change the terms of the resettlement trust. 
 
 Under an agreement between the Marshalls and the US, islanders have the right to live, work and study in the US without restrictions on the duration of their stay. 
 
 "This is an appropriate course of action for the United States to take regarding the welfare and livelihood of the Bikinian people, given the deteriorating conditions on Kili and Ejit Islands in the Marshall Islands - with crowding, diminishing resources, and increased frequency of flooding due to King Tides on their islands," said Assistant Secretary of the Interior Esther Kia'aina. 
 
 The Marshall Islands government says the experience of the Bikini islanders shows the need for a new global agreement on climate change. 
 
 They believe that a new deal can be agreed at a global conference in Paris that begins at the end of November. 
 
 One key element for the island state is that the agreement stipulate that global temperature rises be kept under 1.5 degrees C from pre industrial levels. 
 
 Minister de Brum said that from the point of view of small islands and atoll states, two degrees "cannot remain as the absolute cap for everything we are trying do in limiting global warming". 
 
 Follow Matt on Twitter: @mattmcgrathbbc ||||| An atomic cloud forms July 25, 1946, from the underwater Baker Day Explosion over Bikini Lagoon. The United States relocated inhabitants of Bikini Atoll before exploding 23 nuclear weapons in Bikini between 1946 and 1958. (Photo: National Archives) 
 
 HAGÅTÑA, Guam — Displaced residents of Bikini Atoll, relocated to the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the late 1940s because of U.S. nuclear weapons tests, are asking for the option of leaving the country without losing millions of dollars the U.S. paid them in relocation costs. 
 
 Rising sea levels have destroyed crops in the Marshall Islands and raised concerns about residents' health and safety, according to the Department of the Interior, which has proposed making it easier for displaced Bikini Atoll residents to relocate to the United States or elsewhere. 
 
 Federal treaties, called compacts of free association, already allow residents of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau to live and work in the United States. 
 
 The Interior Department's Office of Insular Affairs is asking Congress to write a bill to allow the people of Bikini to use existing federal resettlement and relocation money even if they leave the Marshall Islands, officials said Wednesday. Bikinians now are restricted from spending the money outside the Marshall Islands. 
 
 As of the end of fiscal 2012, the Resettlement Trust Fund for the People of Bikini had a balance of $69 million, according to audited financial statements. 
 
 The fund generates revenue from investments, and about $6 million a year is spent on wages, improvement projects on the islands of Kili and Ejit, scholarships, travel, and other costs, according to the financial statements. 
 
 “This is an appropriate course of action for the United States to take regarding the welfare and livelihood of the Bikinian people given the deteriorating conditions on Kili and Ejit Islands in the Marshall Islands with crowding, diminishing resources, and increased frequency of flooding.” Esther Kia'aina, Interior Department 
 
 "This is an appropriate course of action for the United States to take regarding the welfare and livelihood of the Bikinian people given the deteriorating conditions on Kili and Ejit Islands in the Marshall Islands with crowding, diminishing resources, and increased frequency of flooding due to King Tides on their islands," Esther Kia'aina, assistant secretary for insular affairs, said in a statement. 
 
 In 1946, 167 Bikinians were relocated to the Marshall Islands, and the U.S. exploded 23 atomic and hydrogen bombs at the Bikini Atoll between 1946 and 1958. The Bikinians were returned to their home in 1969 but were evacuated again in 1978 because of high levels of radioactive elements found in their bodies. 
 
 The proposed change to the spending rules would "provide the people of Bikini better options and the necessary resources for habitable and sustainable living to improve their quality of life and to plan for their future," Kia'aina said. 
 
 The proposal comes at the request of the Kili/Bikini/Ejit Local Government Council, which passed a resolution in August. 
 
 Most Bikinians live on Kili, an island about a third of a square mile in size without a lagoon, rendering their traditional skills useless. More than 5,300 Bikinians live in the Marshall Islands and throughout the United States, according to the resolution. 
 
 The islands of Kili, almost 500 miles from Bikini, and Ejit, more than 500 miles away, have been covered by waves at least five times during the past four years, contaminating all wells on both islands, the resolution states. 
 
 "Because of ongoing deterioration of conditions on Kili and Ejit islands, many of the people of Bikini living on these islands want to move out of the Marshall Islands, primarily to the United States," the resolution states. 
 
 Guam, 1,400 miles east of Bikini Atoll, has been the top U.S. destination for migrants from the compact states, followed by Hawaii, 2,500 miles to the northeast. But a 2011 congressional report said Hawaii is the top destination for migrants specifically from the Marshall Islands. More than 3,500 went to Hawaii compared to 549 in Guam. 
 
 Use the minus button on the map to see where Kili and Ejit islands, Guam and Hawaii are in relation to Bikini Island. 
 
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– Their first home was destroyed by nuclear testing. Their new home is being threatened by climate change. Now the former residents of Bikini Atoll want to use their million-dollar government trust fund to resettle in the US, USA Today reports. More than 150 residents of Bikini Atoll were moved 500 miles away to Kili and Ejit in the Marshall Islands in 1948 so the US could conduct nearly two-dozen atomic tests. They tried to move back in 1969 but had to be relocated again because of radiation. According to the BBC, the US set up a resettlement trust fund to help the displaced Bikini islanders rebuild their lives. However, that fund offers little protection from the life-threatening rising seas brought on by climate change. The BBC reports there was widespread flooding on Kili in 2011 and 2015, and encroaching salt water is killing crops and ruining fresh water supplies. Both Kili and Ejit were covered by waves at least five times in the past four years, according to USA Today. The islanders, who are already allowed to live and work in the US, passed a resolution in August asking the US government to let them take their resettlement trust fund—which has a balance of around $69 million—with them to the US, the BBC reports. The Department of Interior is supporting the islanders and taking their proposal to congress. "This is an appropriate course of action for the United States to take regarding the welfare and livelihood of the Bikinian people, given the deteriorating conditions on Kili and Ejit," the assistant secretary of the Interior says in a statement.