Climate change damaging US military bases in the Arctic, report warns

U.S. military bases in the Arctic and sub-Arctic are failing to prepare their installations for long-term climate change as required, even though soaring temperatures and melting ice already are cracking base runways and roads and worsening flood risks up north, the Pentagon’s watchdog office said Friday.

The report from the inspector general of the Department of Defense provides a rare bit of public stock-taking of the military’s state of readiness – or lack of readiness – for the worsening weather of a warming Earth.

The U.S. military long has formally recognized climate change as a threat to national security . That’s in part because of the impact that intensifying floods, wildfires, extreme heat and other natural disasters are having and will have on U.S. installations and troops around the world.

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2018, photo, an airplane hanger at Tyndall Air Force Base is damaged from hurricane Michael in Panama City, Fla. (David Goldman/AP, File)

Increasing hurricanes, flooding, storms and wildfires in recent years have caused billions of dollars in damage to Florida’s Tyndall Air Force Base , Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base and other U.S. military installations, and interrupted training and other operations.

For years, laws, presidential orders and Pentagon rules have mandated that the military start planning and work so that its installations, warships, warplanes and troops can carry out their missions despite increasingly challenging conditions as the use of fossil fuels heats up the Earth.

While even acknowledging climate change was a career risk for administration officials under former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden directed faster, more sweeping action on climate change by the Department of Defense and other agencies as one of his first acts in office.

Despite Biden’s emphasis, inspectors visiting the United States’ six northernmost military bases last June and July found none were carrying out the required assessments and planning to prepare their installations and operations against long-term climate change.

Further, “most installation leaders at the six installations we visited in the Arctic and sub-Arctic region were unfamiliar with military installation resilience planning requirements, processes, and tools,” the inspector general reports said.

Senior officers told the inspector general’s inspection team that their operations lacked the training and funding to start the required work on hardening their bases. Some saw requirements for that kind of long-term planning as assembling a “wish list” that would go up against competing priorities, the officers told the inspectors.

A Pentagon spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. The inspector general report cited Defense officials as saying that the Biden administration has finished or is working on many of the report’s recommendations to better incorporate climate preparations at bases and across military branches, and would increase resources to bases to make that possible.

One of the bases is in Greenland and the other five in Alaska: Thule Air Base, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Clear Space Force Station, Eielson Air Force Base, Fort Wainwright and Fort Greely.

The Arctic and sub-Arctic are important to U.S. strategic aims in part because of rising tensions and competition with Russia and China, and in part because sharply rising temperatures are melting sea ice and opening up both shipping lanes and access to the region’s oil and other resources, increasing interest and traffic in the region.

The Defense Department also sees “the Arctic is a potential vector for an attack on the U.S. homeland, a region where Russia and China are operating more freely, and a strategic corridor for DoD forces between the Indo-Pacific and Europe,” the report notes.

The inspectors found the kind of problems associated with worsening climate change already causing trouble at the U.S. bases.

At Fort Wainwright in Alaska, heightened wildfire risks in 2019 interrupted training for two Pacific Air Force squadrons, so that one was able to carry out only 59% of planned training for a period, the report said.

Many of the specific discussions of climate risks at the six bases were blacked-out in the version of the report made public Friday.

But inspectors photographed and described some. That included cracked and sunken runways undermined by melting ice, damaged hangers and roads, and a collapsed rock barrier that had been piled up to hold back floodwater from a river swollen by glacial melting, at Thule in Greenland.

Leaders at all six bases visited noted that kind of damage, inspectors said, “however, officials from five of these installations said they had not begun incorporating future climate risks into their installations’ planning.”

“They stated that their day-to-day focus was on reacting to immediate problems or reducing risk to existing hazards, rather than planning for future hazards,” the report noted.

The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than the rest of the world. A March heat wave that hiked Arctic temperatures 50 degrees (30 Celsius) higher than normal stunned scientists.

Of 79 U.S. military installations overall, the Department of Defense says two-thirds are vulnerable to worsening flooding as the climate worsens and half are vulnerable to increasing drought and wildfires.

五角大楼监督办公室周五表示，尽管气温飙升和冰川融化已经导致基地跑道和道路开裂，并加剧了北部地区的洪水风险，但美国在北极和亚北极地区的军事基地未能按照要求做好应对长期气候变化的准备。

国防部监察长的这份报告罕见地公开评估了军队应对全球变暖导致的气候恶化的准备状态（或缺乏准备状态）。

美国军方长期以来一直正式承认气候变化对国家安全构成威胁。部分原因是日益严重的洪水、野火、极端高温和其他自然灾害正在并将继续对世界各地的美国军事设施和军队造成影响。

（档案照片）2018年10月11日，佛罗里达州巴拿马城廷德尔空军基地的飞机库在飓风“迈克尔”的袭击下受损。（David Goldman/AP，档案照片）

近年来，飓风、洪水、暴风雨和野火频发，给佛罗里达州廷德尔空军基地、内布拉斯加州奥弗特空军基地和其他美国军事设施造成了数十亿美元的损失，并中断了训练和其他行动。

多年来，法律、总统命令和五角大楼的规定都要求军方开始规划和工作，以便其设施、军舰、战机和部队能够在化石燃料的使用导致地球变暖而日益严峻的条件下执行任务。

尽管在唐纳德·特朗普总统执政期间，承认气候变化对政府官员来说都是一种职业风险，但乔·拜登总统上任后的首批举措之一，就是指示国防部和其他机构采取更快、更全面的气候变化行动。

尽管拜登强调了这一点，但去年六月和七月视察美国最北端六个军事基地的检查人员发现，没有一个基地进行必要的评估和规划，以使其设施和运作免受长期气候变化的影响。

监察长报告还指出，“在我们走访的北极和亚北极地区的六个军事设施中，大多数设施负责人对军事设施韧性规划的要求、流程和工具都不熟悉。”

高级军官告诉监察长检查组，他们的行动缺乏必要的培训和资金，无法启动基地加固工作。这些军官告诉检查人员，有些人认为这种长期规划的要求就像是列出一份“愿望清单”，而这份清单会与其他优先事项相互冲突。

五角大楼发言人周五未立即回应置评请求。监察长报告援引国防部官员的话称，拜登政府已经完成或正在落实报告中的多项建议，以更好地将气候应对措施纳入军事基地和各军种的行动中，并将增加对军事基地的资源投入，以实现这些目标。

其中一个基地位于格陵兰岛，另外五个位于阿拉斯加：图勒空军基地、埃尔门多夫-理查森联合基地、克利尔空间部队基地、艾尔森空军基地、温赖特堡和格里利堡。

北极和亚北极地区对美国的战略目标至关重要，部分原因是与俄罗斯和中国的紧张局势和竞争日益加剧，部分原因是气温急剧上升导致海冰融化，开辟了航道，并增加了对该地区石油和其他资源的获取途径，从而提高了人们对该地区的兴趣和交通量。

报告指出，国防部还认为“北极是攻击美国本土的潜在途径，俄罗斯和中国在该地区活动更为自由，也是美国国防部部队在印太地区和欧洲之间的战略走廊”。

检查人员发现，气候变化加剧已经给美国军事基地带来了麻烦。

报告称，2019 年阿拉斯加温赖特堡野火风险加剧，导致太平洋空军两个中队的训练中断，其中一个中队在一段时间内只能完成计划训练的 59%。

在周五公布的报告版本中，关于这六个基地气候风险的许多具体讨论都被涂黑了。

但检查人员拍摄并描述了其中一些情况。其中包括因冰雪融化而开裂和下沉的跑道、受损的机库和道路，以及在格陵兰岛图勒，为了阻挡冰川融化导致河水暴涨而堆积起来的坍塌的岩石屏障。

检查人员表示，所有六个受访基地的领导人都注意到了这种损害，“然而，其中五个基地的官员表示，他们还没有开始将未来的气候风险纳入基地规划中。”

报告指出，“他们表示，他们的日常工作重点是应对眼前的危机或降低现有危险的风险，而不是为未来的危险做好规划。”

北极变暖的速度是世界其他地区的两到三倍。3月份的一场热浪使北极气温比正常水平高出50华氏度（30摄氏度），令科学家们震惊不已。

美国国防部表示，在全美 79 个军事设施中，三分之二的设施容易受到气候恶化导致的洪水灾害的影响，一半的设施容易受到日益严重的干旱和野火的影响。