by Laura Parker (National Geographic) Ten times a year, the Naval Station Norfolk floods. The entry road swamps. Connecting roads become impassable. Crossing from one side of the base to the other becomes impossible. Dockside, floodwaters overtop the concrete piers, shorting power hookups to the mighty ships that are docked in the world’s largest naval base.
All it takes to cause such disarray these days is a full moon, which triggers exceptionally high tides.
Norfolk station is headquarters of the Atlantic fleet, and flooding already disrupts military readiness there and at other bases clustered around the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, officials say. Flooding will only worsen as the seas rise and the planet warms. Sea level at Norfolk has risen 14.5 inches in the century since World War I, when the naval station was built. By 2100, Norfolk station will flood 280 times a year, according to one estimate by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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The Defense Department has been planning for climate change for more than a decade, often in the face of roadblocks set up by climate science skeptics in Congress. In 2014 and again last year, Republicans in the House of Representatives added language to Defense Department spending bills prohibiting funds from being spent to plan or prepare for climate change.
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(S)ea-level rise is eroding the Alaska shoreline enough to damage several Air Force radar early warning and communication installations. At one base, half a runway has given way to erosion, preventing large planes from using it. Damage to a seawall has allowed waves to wash onto the runway at another base. Thawing permafrost has also affected access to training areas.
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Sea-level rise is occurring at twice the global average, and at the highest rate along the Atlantic coast, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In addition to the encroaching ocean, the land is also sinking.
The condition has spurred the Defense Department to join forces with state and local officials and scientists in the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach in an experimental partnership to find a way to adapt the region—not just the bases—to the watery future they face. At the navy base, several of the concrete piers have been replaced with double-deck piers. Power lines are no longer vulnerable to flooding.
VanderLey would like to replace more of the piers. But the elephant in the room amid all the planning is cost and funding. Billions are required, and that kind of funding is hard to come by even when members of Congress are not arguing about whether climate change exists. READ MORE