National Defense > Blog > Posts > The Rising Seas: Navy May Request Billions of Dollars to Protect Ports and Bases

6/18/2010

The Rising Seas: Navy May Request Billions of Dollars to Protect Ports and Bases
The science is far from precise, and studies have yet to prove beyond reasonable doubt that warming temperatures and melting glaciers could drive the Earth’s coastlines under water as early as the next decade or two.

But if such predictions turn out to be right, the implications for the U.S. Navy would be huge. Its ports, piers, shipyards and any number of foreign bases would be threatened. Rather than wait until it’s too late, the Navy wants to start laying out contingency plans to fortify facilities and even build wetlands around areas that would be imperiled by rising sea levels, says Rear Adm. David Titley, the Navy's senior oceanographer and director of the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change.

“One of the investments that we are really going to have to think about in the next few decades is the impact of sea-level rise on the Navy’s infrastructure,” says Titley in a conference call with reporters.

His office is drafting a study, known as a “capabilities based assessment” that would seek to convince the Navy’s leadership and the Pentagon money-watchers that funds should be allocated to these efforts as early as fiscal year 2014. “The study is to scope out what types of changes to force structure, infrastructure, command-control-and-communications systems would be required,” Titley says.

If Titley’s contingency plans are approved, “significant money potentially would start flowing” in 2014. He declined to provide specific estimates of what it would cost to protect all facilities, but said it could be billions of dollars.

“I’m almost positive that as we look at different bases we will find that there is no one single solution,” he says. “In some places armoring may be appropriate, in other places, increasing wetlands. We want to work with scientists and engineers, taking into account the specifics of each location.”

Outside the United States, one of the primary areas that would be affected by rising waters is the strategically located U.S. military base on Diego Garcia, a 17-square-mile atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Titley cautions that predicting how far waters will rise is an inexact science. The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change forecast that sea level could rise in the 21st century by up to 2.5 feet. But the report did not take into account the dynamics of ice sheets, and how they flow into the ocean. “This is not well understood,” Titley says. Nor is it clear how long it will take for these phenomena to occur. “There is a lot of scientific uncertainty in the exact timing,” he adds.

The oceans ascended about 8 inches during the 20th century. Factual data already show that seas are going up about 0.12 inches a year so far in the 21st century. “What we’ve seen in the first decade of this century is already 50 percent greater than the average sea level rise in the 20th century,” says Titley. As to what the future holds, the estimates are wide-ranging. The worst-case scenario would have waters soaring 3 to 6 feet by the end of this century. “This is cutting-edge science and much more work needs to be done to confirm this,” says Titley.

In the Navy, he says, “we need to stay in touch with the scientists and as time goes on [we need to] have a plan and understand what it would cost us to execute that plan.”

As to whether the Navy trusts the accuracy of current data, Titley says it has no choice because the service is not going to conduct its own climate research. “The Navy has no desire or resources to reinvent wheels,” he says. It relies on the scientific work already being conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. government’s climate change research program.

This has to be a national, rather than a Navy-centric effort, he says.  Federal agencies that previously had worked separately on climate issues are now collaborating, including the Coast Guard, NASA, the National Science Foundation, NOAA and the Energy Department. The issue is “how do we put the best minds in the nation to work on this problem?” Titley asks. “The same models would support civilian and military” agencies, he says. “The time is right to use the changes in the climate as an opportunity to get this right.”

The Arctic is expected to become a strategic hotspot in the coming decades as a result of climate change. The Navy soon will be sending hundreds of sailors and officers to participate in an Arctic exercise with the Canadian Navy, he says. This will be the first time that the United States will operate large numbers of ships and aircraft north of the Arctic circle.

The United States also expects to be working more closely with Russia, which owns 50 percent of the Arctic coastline, says Titley. Another key ally in this arena is the United Kingdom. The Ministry of Defence appointed two-star Royal Navy Adm. Neil Morisetti as its “climate envoy.” The Indian Navy also has approached the United States about doing joint research. The Dutch have invited Titley to visit the port of Rotterdam to learn about high-tech methods for protecting ports from rising waters.  

Climate change is being regarded as a “common enemy” and is opening the doors to many partnerships among countries that weren’t talking to each other before, he says. 
Posted at 2:31 PM by Sandra Erwin | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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