Military Bases Alaska - EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE — When high temperatures melted the frozen ground at the local munitions repair facility last year, the foundations shifted, causing deep cracks to spread in the thick concrete walls.
Over time, according to Department of Defense documents and interviews with officials responsible for building the base, the repair bay for missiles and other explosives began to separate from the floor, pushing the 12-foot blast door out of one line so that it could not close properly.
Military Bases Alaska
Then the entire facility, built on a sloping slope and hidden in a dense clump of trees, began to slowly slide down to the base of the 10,000 people who work and live below.
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In Alaska, warming severely affected not only wildlife and indigenous communities, but also US military bases during the Cold War. After the threat of closure, some of these bases, such as Eielson, have regained strategic importance due to their proximity to Russia, China and North Korea, and the vast resources of the Arctic that global warming could make available to competing nations.
"Alaska is the most strategic place in the world," Senator Dan Sullivan of R-Alaska said this spring in a statement announcing the arrival of the first two F-35s of the two aircraft squadrons to be stationed here. .
The damaging effects of global warming are increasing the cost of remaining operations at three of the four major U.S. military bases in Alaska: Eielson, Fort Wainwright and Clear Air Force Base. They are all in Alaska's warming belt, where mosaic or "discontinuous" permafrost exists and is prone to thawing.
Military planners are asking for more than $1 billion over five years to fund the construction needed to keep the three bases operational and support the workers and families who work and live there, according to a Howard Center for Investigative Journalism analysis of construction posted by the military pleading. to Congress from fiscal years 2015-2020. While only a portion of this spending goes to climate-related work, that portion is expected to increase.
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"You can at least delay the serious consequences" of global warming for a few decades, said Vladimir Romanovsky, a geophysics professor and permafrost expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "It just takes more work and more money."
Eielson was on the verge of closing when the Air Force decided in 2016 to station two squadrons of fifth-generation stealth fighters there, revitalizing the base and surrounding communities as the damaging effects of global warming became apparent.
Over the years, as engineers watch the munitions repair facility, Building 6385, move with the melting earth, they will patch cracks and repair others in hopes of salvage, said Jason Stormont, project manager at the facility. "They spent years trying to maintain it," he said in an interview, flanked by four security guards escorting visitors outside the secret facility.
"It cannot be restored, so we will raze all the buildings to the ground," Stormont said. The rebuild cost is $15.5 million, according to Air Force Construction Budget documents.
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The new building will require 100-foot-wide steel piles to keep it from becoming unstable and unsafe, said Mark Hoague, Eielson's F-35 facilities program planner.
He said that due to the explosive content inside the facility, it could not be built anywhere other than the undisturbed hills of permafrost on which it currently resides.
Despite the decision to replace the Eielson munitions plant, the Department of Defense does not have technical standards to address the long-term impact of global warming on a military base in Alaska, according to the May 2019 Congressional Military Affairs Report on Structures in the Permafrost Region at the request of a Senate committee Republican-led military.
"Unfortunately, there are no approved design standards that enable engineers to calculate long-term thaw depth or ice strength," the report said. "Developing standard industry practices to estimate temperature rise on this project is critical to resilient arctic and sub-arctic construction."
Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska
A Senate committee said that the Department of Defense's lack of understanding of the impact of climate change on military installations built on permafrost "could cost the Department of Defense military readiness, mission capability, military structures, and valuable taxpayer resources over time."
A new hangar is being built at Eielson Air Force Base for the upcoming F-35 squadron. (Photo by Sara Karlovitch)
According to Air Force budget documents, over the past three years, new construction and repairs to buildings located in or around permafrost at the 63,000-acre Eielson Base cost $164 million. Many new constructions are associated with the arrival of two F-35 squadrons.
At least $5 million was spent in Eielson excavating and replacing permafrost with replacement materials or installing cooling systems to prevent permafrost from melting, the report said. This includes new concrete underground and above-ground storage facilities capable of holding up to 500,000 pounds of explosives.
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"I think it's important to recognize that the (global warming) issue will be unique to each base," said John Conger, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment and now director of the Center for Climate and Security, an agency based in Washington, which advocates a policy of reducing threats to national security arising from climate change.
Military leaders have long recognized global warming as a threat to international operations and stability. Under President Donald Trump, who denies the overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming is happening, the Pentagon has tried to ignore it. For example, he has generally stopped using terms like "climate change" and "global warming" or informing the press about it to avoid upsetting the White House, according to current and former military officials.
Nearly 85% of Alaska lies in permafrost, which is defined as ice, rock or soil that remains below freezing for at least two consecutive years. In northern Alaska and the Arctic, permafrost is more stable than in the warmer central region, which is characterized by thawing patches of permafrost that have become more unstable.
Army Corps of Engineers Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility Manager Gary Larson in one of the tunnels, which is 40,000 years old and maintains a temperature of 26 degrees. (Photo by Sara Karlovitch)
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Scientists from the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers who have studied permafrost say there are only three ways to deal with it: heat it until it melts and then build on top of it, keep it frozen with coolers in the ground, or dig it up and replace a more stable material that does not melt.
According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, Alaska is warming twice as fast as any other U.S. state and twice as fast as the global average. About a foot of permafrost melts in Alaska every decade, said Romanovsky, a permafrost expert.
The melting of the permafrost is leaving its mark in many ways across the country: undulating roller coaster roads, tilted buildings, landslides, huge sinkholes, eroding beaches, flooding and other lightning strikes causing more fires, the problem has been hit at Clear Air Force Station .
According to a January 2019 Department of Defense study titled “Climate Impact Report. to the Department of Defense.
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When the permafrost thaws, there is more water in the ground than usual. As the water evaporates, it forms clouds that produce more rain and lightning, said Thomas A. Douglas, a senior scientist at the U.S. Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory.
Lightning, on the other hand, causes more fires. "If you look at Google Earth and zoom in, you'll see that (Air Force Station Clear) is surrounded by forest," Douglas said. “So soon… you are on the verge of what might burn on your doorstep.
Heat can also be a more direct acceleration of fire. In 2013, an unusually hot summer in Alaska led to wildfires that burned over 1 million acres. More than 2.5 million acres were affected by fires in 2019, which was warmer, according to state fire officials.
The fires, in turn, burn organic matter and vegetation that help keep the permafrost frozen, causing it to melt, Douglas said. Smoke from fires also releases more carbon into the air, increasing global warming.
Elmendorf Air Force Base (afb) In Anchorage, Alaska
"We actually have areas where annual air temperatures were measured above freezing last year, which is unprecedented," said Jeff Curry, a geotechnical engineer at the Air Force.
At Fort Wainwright, a 1.6 million-acre military training post with 7,200 troops in Fairbanks, the Army Corps of Engineers conducted extensive soil and core sampling to map discontinuous permafrost across multiple bases to avoid building on it . that.
Base officials said they could not provide details on the additional costs required to avoid building on permafrost. However
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