Navy is Sailing Along With Climate Change Planning

While Congress struggles to take up climate legislation, the Navy is full steam ahead on the issue.

This week, the Navy released the most detailed military document to date outlining a strategy for meeting the security challenges posed to its operations by melting ice, rising seas, and shifting patterns of precipitation and drought.

"We must ensure our Navy is fully mission-capable and ready to meet national requirements in the future," said Rear Adm. David Titley, who leads the Navy's Task Force Climate Change, which authored the document. "That responsibility includes anticipating the impact of changing climatic conditions on mission requirements, force structure and infrastructure."

In February, the Defense Department's main public strategy document identified climate change as a "threat multiplier," meaning it has the potential to exacerbate and accelerate conflict in fragile regions of the world where the United States has interests.

"The Secretary of Defense and the Quadrennial Defense Review have put a real emphasis on making the connection between energy, climate change and national security," said retired Sen. John Warner, who in 2008 co-authored legislation requiring the military to take into account the effects of climate change in its strategic planning.

Each military branch is now looking at ways of cutting its own energy use and at risks that climate changes pose to its operations. The Navy's strategic planning is the furthest along.

"They started by taking a wide-eyed lens to this issue, asking, 'What's the full range of ways climate change could affect the Navy?' and are now really moving beyond, 'Do we need to think about this, yes or no?' to 'What are the specific ways we need to prepare and train?'" said Christine Parthemore, a fellow at the Center for New American Security, who studies the impact of environmental changes on national security.

The Navy's planning lays out specific steps for the next four years that will prepare its service men and women to strategize for and operate in changing environments.

Training is a main emphasis. The plan recommends including climate change impacts in war games, fleet training, and coursework at the Naval War College, where the upcoming generation of senior military officers is trained. Titley said a half dozen of the environmental topics the task force identified have been picked up for detailed study by officers at the war college, indicating that future military leaders expect climate change to be a critical security issue.

The Navy also plans to stay abreast of the scientific community's work and maintain a list of specific science and technology needs. Academic scientists are often focused on long-term trends and detailed aspects of the climate system, but the military needs environmental information that will allow it to operate on a day-to-day basis and in the future.
Take, for example, what the Navy is looking for in the Arctic. Scientists are predicting that within a few decades, Arctic sea ice could melt for long enough periods to draw commercial shippers and mineral developers to the region. Pinning down when that could happen will be important as the Navy makes large investments in preparing its vessels for the new climate. But, at the same time that the Navy needs these decades-long predictions, it also needs daily ones. Even with far less ice, the Arctic would still be a dangerous place to work, and predicting where the ice is on an hourly basis will be critical information.

The Arctic, in fact, is a region that figures prominently in the Navy's strategic planning. Last fall, the Navy produced an Arctic planning document specifically aimed at the challenges and opportunities posed by melting ice.

Ultimately, the Navy's new guidelines are a tool for investment planning. Some of the equipment that changing climate conditions could require, such as ice-hardened vessels capable of operating in the Arctic, cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than the current versions. Moreover, many of the Navy's bases are at sea-level and could be threatened by rising seas. The Navy expects to begin making strategic investments related to the effects of climate change beginning in fiscal year 2014.

"If you are caught by a crisis, you tend to open up your checkbook and just start spending," said Titley who, as Oceanographer of the Navy, is a senior-level adviser on the department's budget. "Before climate change is deemed a crisis to national security, we want to have studied it and have a sense of where to put the investments so we spend them wisely."