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FOIA Response Letter

The post Is Our Climate Changing? The Situation, The Threat, The Challenge – 1991 Los Alamos Presentation by Charles ‘Chick’ Keller first appeared on The Black Vault.

The western world’s leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental global climatic change. The stability of most nations is based upon a dependable source of food, but this stability will not be possible under the new climatic era. A forecast by the University of Wisconsin projects that the earth’s climate is returning to that of the neo-boreal era (l600-18S0)-an era of drought, famine, and political unrest in the western world.

A responsibility of the Intelligence Community is to assess a nation’s capability and stability under varying internal or external pressures. The assessments normally include an analysis of the country’s social, economic, political, and military sectors. The implied economic and political intelligence issues resulting from climatic change range far beyond the traditional concept of intelligence. The analysis of these issues is based upon two key questions:

• Can the Agency depend on climatology as a science to accurately project the future?
• What knowledge and understanding is available about world food production and can the consequences of a large climatic change be assessed?

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A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems, August 1974 [37 Pages, 13MB]

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The post A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems, August 1974 first appeared on The Black Vault.

An international effort that brought together more than 60 ice, ocean, and atmosphere scientists from three dozen international institutions has generated new estimates of how much of an impact Earth’s melting ice sheets could have on global sea levels by 2100. If greenhouse gas emissions continue apace, Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets could together contribute more than 15 inches (38 centimeters) of global sea level rise – and that’s beyond the amount that has already been set in motion by Earth’s warming climate.

Results from this effort are in line with projections in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2019 Special Report on Oceans and the Cryosphere. Meltwater from ice sheets contribute about a third of the total global sea level rise. The IPCC report projected that Greenland would contribute 3.1 to 10.6 inches (8 to 27 cm) to global sea level rise between 2000 and 2100 and Antarctica could contribute 1.2 to 11 inches (3 to 28 cm).

These new results, published this week in a special issue of the journal The Cryosphere, come from the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project (ISMIP6) led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The study is one of many efforts scientists are involved in projecting the impact of a warming climate on melting ice sheets, understanding its causes, and tracking sea level rise.

“One of the biggest uncertainties when it comes to how much sea level will rise in the future is how much the ice sheets will contribute,” said project leader and ice scientist Sophie Nowicki, now at the University at Buffalo and formerly at NASA Goddard. “And how much the ice sheets contribute is really dependent on what the climate will do.”

“The strength of ISMIP6 was to bring together most of the ice sheet modeling groups around the world, and then connect with other communities of ocean and atmospheric modelers as well, to better understand what could happen to the ice sheets,” said Heiko Goelzer, a scientist from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, now at NORCE Norwegian Research Centre in Norway. Goelzer led the Greenland ice sheet ISMIP6 effort.

With warming air temperatures melting the surface of the ice sheet and warming ocean temperatures causing ocean-terminating glaciers to retreat, Greenland’s ice sheet is a significant contributor to sea level rise. The ISMIP6 team investigated two different scenarios the IPCC has set for future climate to predict sea level rise between 2015 and 2100: one with carbon emissions increasing rapidly and another with lower emissions.

In the high emissions scenario, they found that the Greenland ice sheet would lead to an additional global sea level rise of about 3.5 inches (9 cm) by 2100. In the lower-emissions scenario, the loss from the ice sheet would raise global sea level by about 1.3 inches (3 cm). This is beyond what is already destined to be lost from the ice sheet due to warming temperatures between pre-industrial times and now; previous studies have estimated that “locked in” contribution to global sea level rise by 2100 to be about a quarter-inch (6 millimeters) for the Greenland ice sheet.

The ISMIP6 team also analyzed the Antarctic ice sheet to understand how much ice melt from future climate change would add to sea level rise, beyond what recent warming temperatures have already put in motion. Ice loss from the Antarctic ice sheet is more difficult to predict: In the west, warm ocean currents erode the bottom of large floating ice shelves, causing loss, while the vast East Antarctic ice sheet can gain mass, as warmer temperatures cause increased snowfall.

The results point to a greater range of possibilities, from ice sheet change that decreases sea level by 3.1 in (7.8 cm), to increasing it by 12 in (30 cm) by 2100, with different climate scenarios and climate model inputs. The regional projections show the greatest loss in West Antarctica, responsible for up to 7.1 in (18 cm) of sea level rise by 2100 in the warmest conditions, according to the research.

“The Amundsen Sea region in West Antarctica and Wilkes Land in East Antarctica are the two regions most sensitive to warming ocean temperatures and changing currents, and will continue to lose large amounts of ice,” said Hélène Seroussi, an ice scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Seroussi led the Antarctic ice sheet modeling in the ISMIP6 effort. “With these new results, we can focus our efforts in the correct direction and know what needs to be worked on to continue improving the projections.”

Different groups within the ISMIP6 community are working on various aspects of the ice sheet modeling effort. All are designed to better understand why the ice sheets are changing and to improve estimates of how much ice sheets will contribute to sea level rise. Other recent ISMIP6 studies include:

• How historical conditions and warming ocean temperatures that melt floating ice shelves from below play a significant role in Antarctic ice loss? [Reese et al https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3097-2020]
• How sudden and sustained collapse of the floating ice shelves impact the Antarctic ice sheet as a whole? [Sun et al. (2020), https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2020.67]
• How to convert large scale climate output into local conditions that ice sheet models can use? [Barthel et al (2020) https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/14/855/2020/, Slater et al (2019, 2020) https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/14/985/2020/, Nowicki et al (2020) https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/14/2331/2020, and Jourdain et al https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3111-2020]

“It took over six years of workshops and teleconferences with scientists from around the world working on ice sheet, atmosphere, and ocean modeling to build a community that was able to ultimately improve our sea level rise projections,” Nowicki said. “The reason it worked is because the polar community is small, and we’re all very keen on getting this problem of future sea level right. We need to know these numbers.”

The new results will help inform the Sixth IPCC report scheduled for release in 2022.

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The post Emissions Could Add 15 Inches to 2100 Sea Level Rise, NASA-led Study Finds — September 17, 2020 first appeared on The Black Vault.

As a Service and Department we must act decisively, recognizing that climate change threatens to exacerbate other existing pressures on the sustainability of our fish and wildlife resources. We must act boldly, without having all the answers, confident that we will learn and adapt as we go. And most importantly, we must act now, as if the future of fish and wildlife and people hangs in the balance — for indeed, all indications are that it does.

As a Service, we are committed to examining everything we do, every decision we make, and every dollar we spend through the lens of climate change, fully confident in our workforce to rise to this challenge and to lead from in front and from behind. We recognize their efforts that are already underway, and we look to our employees for their on the ground knowledge and expertise in focusing our energies and recalibrating our activities.

Our Strategic Plan acknowledges that no single organization or agency can address an environmental challenge of such global proportions without allying itself with others in partnerships across the nation and around the world. This document commits us to a philosophy of interdependent, collaborative conservation, rooted in our Climate Change Principles.

Our Strategic Plan’s primary purposes are to (1) lay out our vision for accomplishing our mission to “work with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people” in the face of accelerating climate change; and (2) provide direction for our own organization and its employees, defining our role within the context of the Department of the Interior and the larger conservation community. In
this plan, we express our commitment to our vision through strategic goals and objectives that we believe must be accomplished to sustain fish and wildlife nationally and internationally.

In an appended 5-Year Action Plan for Implementing the Climate Change Strategic Plan, we identify specific actions that will lead to the accomplishment of
our goals and objectives.

The Report

 Rising to the Urgent Challenge Strategic Plan for Responding to Accelerating Climate Change, September 2010 [36 Pages, 1.8MB]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/weather/climatechange/CCStrategicPlan.pdf

The post Rising to the Urgent Challenge Strategic Plan for Responding to Accelerating Climate Change, September 2010 first appeared on The Black Vault.

“Climate Change” is a hotbed topic among politicians, scientists, environmentalists, and many every-day people that live on Planet Earth.  Are WE causing the change? Or is this a normal, scientific event that has no cause, but rather, is simply Mother Nature.

Below are records pertaining to climate change found throughout different agencies.

 Declassified Documents

 Two Degrees of Separation: Abrupt Climate Change and the Adverse Impact to US National Security, April 2009 [55 Pages, 0.9MB] – Scientific evidence indicates recent global climate trends which if remain unchanged or develop further could result in abrupt climate change. Abrupt climate change could result in serious environmental and social impacts. The most serious environmental impact would be the disruption of the natural processes which sustain, feed, and fuel people and nations. The disruption of these natural ecosystem processes could result in the scarcity and/or inaccessibility of vital natural resources like water, food, and energy supplies. Scarcity and/or inaccessibility of vital natural resources could create social and political turmoil and adversely impact regional stability and homeland security. As the US is the largest historical producer of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of the greenhouse gases, it should reform and adopt policies to adapt to the effects and/or mitigate the onset of abrupt climate change. Failure to take action will leave the US vulnerable to the environmental, social, and political impacts of abrupt climate change and threaten national security and vital US interests.

 Should the U.S. Ratify the Kyoto Treaty? 27 March 2009 by Lieutenant Colonel Adrian C. Poné [30 Pages, 0.7MB] – Global warming is a serious issue but also a contentious one; perhaps the fate of the planet hinges on man’s ability to limit anthropogenic greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which to some, is causing an alarming rise in the earth’s temperature, with potentially catastrophic results. And yet to others, the global warming issue is a non-issue, the so-called global warming alarmism is really no cause for concern, and the investment in reducing CO2 is not worth the benefit. At the center of the debate is the Kyoto protocol, an international treaty which mandates reduction in CO2 emissions, primarily from industrial nations to pre-1990 levels. To date, the U.S. has not ratified Kyoto while over almost all the world’s countries, have. This paper will examine Kyoto and the impact of signing it. In doing so, this paper will discuss global warming, is it real, and is man causing it? This paper will explore many of the issues surrounding the global warming debate, the ramifications of ratifying Kyoto and the costs and benefits of adopting a “greener” society.

 How America Can Look Within to Achieve Energy Security and Reduce Global Warming, September 2008 [113 Pages, 5.3MB] – Making major gains in energy efficiency is one of the most economical and effective ways our nation can wean itself off its dependence on foreign oil and reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases. Transportation and buildings, which account for two thirds of American energy usage, consume far more than they need to, but even though there are many affordable energy efficient technologies that can save consumers money, market imperfections inhibit their adoption. To overcome the barriers, the federal government must adopt policies that will transform the investments into economic and societal benefit. And the federal government must invest in research and development programs that target energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is one of America’s great hidden energy reserves. We should begin tapping it now.

 Global Warming Could Have a Chilling Effect on the Military, October 2003 [9 Pages, 0.7MB] – Most debates and studies addressing potential climate change have focused on the buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. But this “slow ramp” climate change scenario ignores recent and rapidly advancing evidence that Earth’s climate repeatedly has become much colder, warmer, wetter, or drier-in time spans as short as three to 10 years. Earth’s climate system appears to have sensitive thresholds, the crossing of which shifts the system into different modes of operation and triggers rapid, non-linear, and not necessarily global changes. This new paradigm of abrupt climate change does not appear to be on the radar screens of military planners, who treat climate change as a long term, low-level threat, with mostly sociological, not national security, implications. But intense and abrupt climate changes could escalate environmental issues into unanticipated security threats, and could compromise an unprepared military. The global ocean circulation system, often called the Ocean Conveyor, can change rapidly and shift the distribution patterns of heat and rainfall over large areas of the globe. The North Atlantic region is particularly vulnerable to abrupt regional coolings linked to ocean circulation changes. Global warming and ocean circulation changes also threaten the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover. Beyond the abrupt climatic impacts, fundamental changes in ocean circulation also have immediate naval implications. Recent evidence suggests that the oceans already may be experiencing large-scale changes that could affect Earth’s climate. Military planners should begin to consider potential abrupt climate change scenarios and their impacts on national defense.

 JPRS Report, Environmental Issues, Japan: Response Strategies for Global Warming Studied, 12 June 1990 [134 Pages, 4.9MB] – This report contains the proceedings carried out between January and June 1989 by the subgroups of the Advisory Committee on Climate change whose aim was to assess the environmental impacts and to evaluate response strategies. This follows the first interim report submitted in November 1988 by the Advisory Committee on climate change. This volume contains summaries of the reports given by the members of the subgroups. Interest in the global warming effect has seen a soaring increase over the past year. However, a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the problem is quite difficult to attain even among specialists within the field. Furthermore, the studies being conducted by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change) on the scientific aspects, environmental and socioeconomic impacts, and response strategies have not yet laid down any guidelines. Thus, with this background in view, these groups have conducted their own investigations on similar categories as is being considered by IPCC, in order to sort out the issues involved in the problem. Although this report was prepared with the intension of integrating all knowledge on the issue, it cannot be said to cover all views currently held both inside and outside of Japan. To cope with the global warming problem, considerations of more specific issues are needed. The present interim report, although not as comprehensive as desired, has been made public with the intention of providing a starting point in the assessment of our common and needed efforts which are necessary in order to assess and deal with the issue of global warming more effectively.

Department of the NAVY Records

 Global Climate Change Implications for the United States Navy, May 1990 [86 Pages, 7.56MB]

Military War College Theses

 Military Implications of Global Warming, 20 May 1999 [42 Pages, 1.3MB] – The 1998 National Security Strategy repeatedly cites global environmental issues as key to the long-term security of the United States. Similarly, U.S. environmental issues also have important global implications. This paper analyzes current U.S. Policy as it pertains to global warming and climate change. It discusses related economic factors and environmental concerns. It assesses current White House policy as it relates to the U.S. military. It reviews the Department of Defense strategy for energy conservation and reduction of greenhouse gases. Finally, it offers recommendations and options for military involvement to reduce global warming. Global warming and other environmental issues are important to the U.S. military. As the United States leadership in environmental matters encourages global stability, the U.S. military will be able to focus more on readiness and on military training and operations.

 Global-Warming: A National Security Issue, 13 Feb 2006 [22 Pages, 0.2MB] – The waters in the Canadian Arctic are quickly becoming free to navigate due to global warming. international shipping bombards the region, the United States and Canada must be ready to face the security implications that will arise. A failure to do so may leave an opening for another terrorist strike on American soil. We must also be prepared to protect our interests in the region. Focus on Arctic oil is becoming a reality as we move towards freeing ourselves from dependence on oil from the Middle East. Preparing for operations in the Arctic must begin with a strong and cooperative relationship with our Canadian neighbors. Differences must be settled quickly particularly the issue over the sovereignty of the Canadian archipelago. We must also understand the implications of operating in the north with respect to the indigenous population and the environment. The success of the operations in the north depends on proactive planning now is the time.

 Global Warming: Its Implications for US National Security Policy, 19 March 2009 [30 Pages, 0.4MB] – The approach to this topic will be to look at the science behind anthropogenic global warming. Is man largely responsible for causing global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, or is this climate change part of a natural cycle? Both sides of the issue will be addressed. This paper will then investigate the nexus between global warming and U.S. national security policy. It will address the challenges facing U.S. leaders and policy makers as they tackle the issue of global warming and its implications for U.S. policy. Finally it will conclude with recommendations for those leaders as the U.S. seeks to ameliorate the impact of global climate change, and thereby improve U.S. national security.

 National Security Implications of Global Warming Policy, March 2010 [29 Pages, 0.7MB] – Although numerous historical examples demonstrate how actual climate change has contributed to the rise and fall of powers, global warming, in and of itself, is not our nation’s greatest climate threat. Rather, the greatest climate threat to national security is the world’s perception of climate change and the resulting governmental and intergovernmental policies enacted to reduce the theorized anthropogenic greenhouse warming. As governments become convinced that global warming is universally bad and humans are the primary cause, political leaders may develop ill-advised policies restricting US access and use of global energy supplies, weaken the US economy, and unfairly advantage rising developing nations. These three actions could combine to threaten United States security by reducing our relative national power in comparison with rising nations. Rather than adopting multilateral policies aimed at reducing the carbon emissions of developed nations, the United States should continue to resist adopting Kyoto Protocol type policies to preserve our national wealth to better fund Homeland Defense and national security.

The post Global Warming / Climate Change first appeared on The Black Vault.