Military bases unprepared for rising sea levels and increased flooding

WASHINGTON — Rising sea levels triggered by climate change will likely cause extensive flooding at military bases on America’s coasts in just a few decades, forcing the military to reconstruct and, in some cases, potentially relocate their bases.

According to a climate assessment report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sea level rise caused by melting glaciers and ice sheets, as well as a decline in water storage on land, threatens America’s coastal regions.17 military bases on the East Coast are particularly susceptible to some level of increased flooding, according to a 2016 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The report claims that by 2100, eight bases could be at risk of losing 25 percent or more of their land to rising seas and four installations could lose 75 to 95 percent of their land, including Naval Air Station Key West, the southernmost military installation in the continental US.

In 2014, the Pentagon acknowledged rising sea levels could compromise mission readiness and said in a report it planned to boost its “resilience”.

John Conger, the former principal under secretary of defense at DoD and current director for the Center for Climate and Security, says the military is well aware of the threats posed by climate change, including sea level rise.

“They acknowledge the problem, they understand the problem and they know they have to do something about it,” Conger said. But what exactly should be done is still undecided.

“They need to start putting down and integrating and coming up with resilience plans that are base-specific,” Conger said. “Do they have that done? No.”

He said the military is not yet at the point where it can make determinations about what should be done at each base. According to Conger, while the military has been “forward-leaning” on issues of climate change, the leaders do not address it as a political issue but as a security issue.

“Their focus is on missions, not emissions,” Conger said. “As they do that, they adapt to the situation they see in front of them and they see coming.”

Scientists agree that future climate issues are based on mostly nebulous predictions.

“Obviously we don’t know how emissions are going to evolve 50 years from now,” said Kristina Dahl, a scientist who co-wrote the 2016 report. “But currently we are on a higher track.” In the upcoming decades, large parts of bases would be susceptible to frequent flooding.

“Over time, as we get closer to mid or late-century, we do see those sorts of floods starting to affect runways or roads along the base,” Dahl said.

According to the Government Accountability Office, the Defense Department has begun to assess installation’s vulnerability for sea level rise. An early warning site in Alaska has already been compromised by erosion as a result of sea level rise.

In response, the Air Force contracted researches in Anchorage to further study the issue last year. In some sections of the Alaskan coastline, hundreds of feet of land have been lost to the sea in just a few years.