Climate and securityU.S. Navy experience shows climate alterations
The U.S. Navy reports that because of its worldwide presence, it sees the effects of climate change directly; and expert tells a scientific audience at Sandia Lab that disparities in current climate science projections “mean that the Navy should plan for a range of contingencies, given our limited ability to predict abrupt change or tipping points for potentially irreversible change”
In an effort to shed light on the wide spectrum of thought regarding the causes and extent of changes in Earth’s climate, Sandia National Laboratories has asked experts from a wide variety of perspectives to present their views in the Climate Change and National Security Speaker Series, being held at the lab.
In a recent presentation to a scientific audience in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and, by teleconference, Livermore Lab, California, Antonio Busalacchi, professor and director of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) at the University of Maryland and former chief of the NASA/Goddard Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes, said that the U.S. Navy, because its presence is worldwide, sees the effects of climate change directly.
“The findings are independent of climate models,” said Busalacchi.
The global community needs the scientific capacity to improve and sustain global observations, he said, for more realistic global and regional climate models.
A Sandia Lab release reports that Busalacchi, lecturing on “Climate Research in Service to Society,” described extensive gathering of climate data over the last thirty-two years, coordinated by the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), which Busalacchi chairs. As one example, he described “unprecedented sampling of the world’s oceans” during an ocean circulation experiment.
Key to that effort was a fleet of 3,000 “argo float capsules,” each a few feet long, capable of submerging 2,000 meters (6,562 feet) before floating to the surface while recording ocean temperatures and salinities. The data they sent allowed scientists to link ocean and atmosphere data and forecast seasonal effects of El Niño from 1997 and 1998.
Busalacchi was most vivid in describing his work co-chairing a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committee to determine national security implications of climate change for U.S. naval actions.
Among those who briefed his committee were the supreme allied commander of the U.S. European command, members of the National Intelligence Council, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The committee learned that the Navy is confronting more extreme temperatures worldwide, he said, along with the melting of sea ice and glaciers, the rise of sea levels at isolated locations, more frequent high-intensity storms, more droughts, regional flooding, ocean temperature increase, and declining reserves of potable water because of increased salinity.
Because melting sea ice gives all comers greater Arctic access, the Navy also faces strategic issues of potential cooperation, competition, or conflict due to significantly increased shipping and exploration in the region. Busalacchi predicted open summer
