National Security Implications of Climate Change for U.S. Naval Forces (2011) / Chapter Skim
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2 Naval Capabilities and Potential Climate-Change-Related Operational Issues
2 Naval Capabilities and Potential Climate-Change-Related Operational Issues
Pages 36-62
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From page 36... ...
For example, Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) has compiled information from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
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Navy hospital ships, Naval Mobile Construction Battalions (NMCBs) , and Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs)
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naval forces regarding climate change impacts on missions, capabilities, and operations: · The need to develop capabilities, including logistics and training, to sup port new missions that climate change may bring; · The need to respond to an increase in the demand for certain types of existing missions; and · The need to maintain current warfighting capabilities as the operating environment changes. Regarding new or expanding missions, the committee considers the need to operate in the Arctic and the expected increase in demand for HA/DR missions and operations related to mass migrations to be most likely.
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combatant or amphibious ships, due to the nature of these ships' primary missions. Maintaining the capabilities provided by the hospital ships goes beyond just ensuring an equivalent bed capacity.
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Navy hospital ships will become even more important in supporting potential humanitarian assistance/ disaster relief (HA/DR) -related missions that will likely occur as a result of crises created by climate change.
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Each MEU maintains 15 days of sustainability in a self-contained sea base. The large-deck amphibious ship in each ARG has a medical capability as well as a platform for sustained helicopter and MV-22 military transport aircraft opera tions that can operate independently or in conjunction with other naval elements, including a hospital ship.
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Naval Mobile Construction Battalions The Navy's NMCB units are capable of a wide range of heavy construction and should be considered a national asset that would be available in response to HA/DR missions or crises brought on by the effects of climate change.9 Each NMCB unit is self-contained, with its own support structure, and it can provide an expeditionary brigade with a wide range of construction capabilities to include site preparation, roads, airfields, and buildings if necessary. One Seabee unit will support a Navy fleet hospital ashore as well as construct the expeditionary airfield if there is a requirement to build one in an area of operations.
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Recent estimates are that in 2050 the world's population will be 9 billion people, and that 200 million people could be newly mobilized as climate migrants due to climate change effects.14 These mass migration increases will not only affect the humanitarian assistance requirements of the naval forces, but could also result in instability as well as unrest and regional conflict. One possible outflow of these events is the evacuation of U.S.
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From page 44... ...
Plans, Training, and Provisioning of Forces As the committee reviewed the impacts of climate change on the operations of naval forces, it became apparent that changes in mission, increased operations in existing missions, and operating in the new environment that might be expected in 20 years' time should affect how the Navy plans, trains, and equips its forces. The committee suggests that planning scenarios be revised to include climate change effects, and war gaming be conducted to test the functionality of the plans in light of the new challenges to operations.
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Naval Capabilities and Potential Climate-Change Related Operational Issues in the Arctic Changes in Arctic Ice Cover and Its Implications Recent climate change may have the most immediate and obvious implications for maritime operations in the Arctic region.15 The Arctic is experiencing significant reductions in sea-ice cover in the Arctic Ocean and the disappearance of older, thicker, multiyear ice.16 The loss of sea-ice area in summer months is about three times faster than in winter. As a result, the vast Arctic is rapidly acquiring the types of maritime activities that normally occur elsewhere in the world's ice-free oceans.
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2007. "Arctic Sea Ice Decline: Faster Than Forecast," Geophysical Research Letters, Vol.
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The Arctic Council, a governmental forum of these five nations plus Iceland, Sweden, and Finland, offers a diplomatic vehicle for addressing contemporary Arctic issues. However, maritime boundary disputes abound.
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-25, and raised the possibility that Arctic issues will require national security attention from U.S. naval forces in the future.
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. A 50 percent ice concentration could mean that one out of two days will be seaice free or that on a given day the cover is 502-3 percent sea ice and 50 percent open water.
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Canada, a strong U.S. ally, is preparing and planning to build six armed, ice-strengthened patrol vessels for Arctic sovereignty operations, establish a high-latitude logis tics base, and construct a high-Arctic training facility.25 Canadian naval forces are exercised each summer in Operation Nanook in northern Baffin Bay, with increasing U.S.
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naval capabilities in the Arctic will require attention to shore-based infrastructure, communications capabilities, competencies and operating experience, icebreakers and ice-capable ships, and combatant command issues. Shore-Based Infrastructure The Arctic encompasses vast areas with long distances between outposts.
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, U.S. naval forces will clearly depend on allied nations for necessary shore-side support.
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Addition ally, a recent report by the National Research Council highlighted the fact that two of the nation's three multimission polar icebreakers are at the end of their designed service lives and that the icebreaker operating budgets are controlled by the National Science Foundation.32 Considering projected increases in resource 31 See Report to Congress: U.S. Coast Guard Polar Operations, 2008, p.
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Polar icebreakers may also be an economical alternative for executing Coast Guard missions in the ice-influenced EEZ around Alaska. In general, icebreakers provide the nation with its only sovereign surface presence in the Arctic, complementing U.S.
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. SOURCE: Derived from Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment Data Base, National Research Council, 2007, Polar Icebreakers in a Changing World: An Assessment of U.S.
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icebreaking capabilities, the POLAR SEA should remain mission capable and the POLAR STAR should remain available for reactivation until the new polar icebreakers enter service.
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2007. Polar Icebreakers in a Changing World: An Assessment of U.S.
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national icebreaker assets should be defined as part of a holistic force structure that also accommodates ongoing National Science Foundationsponsored polar research needs. Arctic Command Issues As world conditions and defense needs evolve, the Unified Command Plan (UCP)
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military as a whole has lost most of its competence in cold-weather operations for high-Arctic warfare. RECOMMENDATION 2.5: The Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Commandant of the Coast Guard should establish a strong and consistently funded effort to increase Arctic operations and share les sons, including with allies.
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The threat is immediate from the acute disease and long term due to the known deleterious effects of disease on growth and development. The spectrum of climate change impacts on human health and disease is wide, including the European heat wave of 2003, which took over 30,000 lives, and extreme precipitation events leading to outbreaks of disease -- such as the diarrheal disease outbreak caused by Cryptosporidium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, following heavy spring rains in 1993.41 On the other hand, drought can be just as harmful, because it leads to a diminished and more likely contaminated water supply resulting in outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and the spread of dis ease such as Rift Valley Fever in Africa, or the hantavirus.
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naval forces to consider new-disease vectors when preparing to respond to new missions. 43 See National Research Council, 2001, Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease, 2001, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.
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RECOMMENDATION 2.6: U.S. naval leadership should consider the impact of changing disease vectors on the population when forecasting the impact of climate change, and should also consider climate-change-related changing disease vectors in preparing troops for response to missions around the globe.
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