EAG Initiates Climate Change and Operations Research

By Kristen Fletcher, Faculty Associate-Research, Energy Academic Group

For many years, DoD has recognized the relevance of climate change to national security, and recent Executive Orders require DoD to take climate change into account in operations. The range of operations includes ships, planes, submarines, expeditionary forces and installations. A persistent challenge is identifying and understanding the true impact of climate change on Navy and Marine Corps operations.     

Many climate change impacts will reduce naval capabilities, some impacts will be benign, while others may be beneficial. Understanding, projecting, and predicting impacts is especially important for strategic and operational planning, but they are also important for tactical planning. In addition, the availability of data and analysis is increasing and can help the DoN better understand how to meet its operational mission in a changing climate and environment.     

This summer, EAG initiated an interdisciplinary research project to catalogue existing studies that show climate change impacts on systems, platforms and their related operations and to develop a framework to assess the ways in which a changing climate may cause impacts. The project will help identify knowledge gaps and target research and analysis priorities. EAG will share its findings in the form of a report and briefings in 2023.