 Good morning everyone. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute and we are so glad that you are here with us this morning for our briefing topic, Losing Ground Managing Climate Risk in the Southeast. As we have looked at the unfolding of and the outreach going on around the release of the National Climate Assessment over the course of the last few weeks, we have been struck by the impacts, the need to look at risk management strategies across the country because indeed every area of our country is affected by this and of course we are seeing this in very real time as I think every state across the country, so many communities have been experiencing all kinds of different events, extreme weather events and are having to deal with that, so we're dealing with very, very real problems that really need practical solutions and need to really think about how we make our infrastructure, our built infrastructure, our communities more resilient, how we really try and reduce to prevent as much risk as possible to the changes that we are seeing going on around us and which scientists have indicated those changes are undoubtedly going to become ever more frequent and indeed worse and therefore it's really important for us to understand the impacts and the implications of that so that we can begin to address them in thoughtful, effective and problem solving ways so we are really excited about the presenters that we have with us here this morning to take a look at this special region of our country in particularly the southeast and to start us off this morning is Dr. Virginia Burkett who is the Chief Scientist for Global Change with the US Geological Survey. Dr. Burkett has been working in this area for a long time, she's been involved with a number of the national assessments that have been done over the last couple decades. She has also been involved as a lead author as well with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports so she brings a wealth of experience and prior to joining US Geological, the Forest Ecology branch of the of the National Wetlands Research Center in Lafayette, Louisiana as part of USGS and she also had worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Louisiana and had also been heavily involved in coastal zone management in Louisiana so Dr. Burkett, welcome. Thank you for inviting me to the briefing series and for being able to work with these folks here to kind of give context for the changes that we expect in the southeast. I know your presence here indicates your interest in the region and for the US climate assessment for all three assessment reports now and this is our third one we've broken the country down into regions and the southeastern region you can see there on the bottom lower right and to to support the chapters of the national climate assessment we did a series of reports like this one here we started these three years ago we did a coastal assessment that that I helped lead had 80 co-authors on that so literally hundreds and hundreds of scientists from around the country contributed to the inputs to the national climate assessment then we produced the highlights which is the only hard print thing we're doing and um and you outside we had just a little spread for the southeast. I want to acknowledge my my lead authors uh Lynn Carter who's in Africa now and Jim Jones with the University of Florida and the rest of us here but basically this is just to write you know the eight pages or so that send the the full report that builds on all of this other work or draws from all of this other work that people have done in the region. The three key messages from the southeastern report and from the chapter are pretty simple sea level rise increasing temperatures and decreasing water availability are the main threats to the environments and the regional economy of the Gulf Coast to public health forestry agriculture and uh if you ever you might remember the water wars in Lakeland they were linear just a few years ago that really showed that the southeast isn't you know not like the southwest in terms of being water scarce but has a lot of challenges with water resources. Let's start with temperature which driving all of these changes and you can see that the temperature for the southeast can you see the temperature for the southeast it it's unusual in that we had a cooling period here but otherwise the trajectory has pretty much been like the rest of the of the country and the United and the world and these are the emissions that I mean the the projections for the future under a high emission scenario and a low emission scenario and these are comparable to what we found in IPCC as well so all the things I'm going to present to you I can't think of a single contradiction with the IPCC report that we just released last month and a lot of folks got from a magazine Wilno magazine called me said what about this cooling in the southeast and trying to get their hands around this because this is on the cover of the report and then tried to explain to him that this cooling period was so severe there in this uh this this short term in the late 50s and 60s that if you do the average or the regression through all of the data it looks like a cooling but the southeast warmed it's warming now at rates comparable to the global average so this is from the U.S. National Assessment but if you look at this one from the IPCC report the most recent one you can see these are using some some data from the United States from NOAA that if you look from 1911 to 1940 you've got warming in the southeast everything this brown or or yellow is warming and then you've got this cool period and the United States like other parts of the northern hemisphere some parts actually showed cooling but then if you look at the last 20 years 30 years you see the southeast is cooling at rates that are comparable to the global average so when you see that that that picture of the United States and it looks like the southeast is cooling just remember that's because you've got 110-year average shown there and it's just the most recent decades that uh I mean it's because of you know averaging out for that cool period right there so it it's uh it's in the data and it's it's easily explained but the picture does kind of throw people there's a southeast so looking at the southeast uh the days over 95 degrees projected in the future you know you can see here the change in the number of days over 95 look at south Florida north Louisiana 30 40 50 days more of over 95 degree temperatures and the same thing with the winter the evening temperatures as well and uh ground level o zone increases with temperature presenting a human health problem and this is just a map from the national assessment showing what we project by 2050 compared to 2001 the ground level o zone precipitation change again we've got some areas that look like they're getting drier some areas getting wetter in general in the northern hemisphere the the land areas are getting wetter so if you look across the united states particularly if you're bringing Alaska the trend is and this is the U.S. average a trend towards more rainfall okay but again it's not the 100-year average and it's not even annual average that drives changes in ecosystems it affects some communities the changes in heavy precipitation this is the actual trend so we've got more rainfall but it's coming down in the form of more heavy downpours which are less effective in maintaining soil moisture salinity and estuaries and that sort of thing this is the projected change in seasonal precipitation and look for the growing season particularly spring and summer much more dry conditions are projected and that's just if you look at the tip the precipitation aspect and then you put temperature on top of that and you've got higher rates of evapotranspiration more intense and widespread droughts more widespread and frequent fires and so forth more outbreaks of pests like the southern cotton beetle just just cascades through the whole system so remember that it's the combination of these drivers that will affect ecosystems and communities in the region there okay and so as I mentioned it's the combination of the increase in temperature with the changes in precipitation patterns that are projected to increase the the stress on water supply in the southeast this is the projected trend through the middle of the century due to climate change using a combination of a of a these are two conservative emission scenarios we're tracking above these two emission scenarios presently and this is the spatial change in water availability and where you have the hatched marks that's where we have high model agreement so we have higher confidence in the decline in water availability here than we do here for example in some areas we expect to have more water mainly among that Atlantic coastline and shifting now to changes in sea level rise the rate of sea level rise based on the geologic proxy data that we have for our coastal systems around the world this is basically the trend and then we have tide gauge data starting about 1880 going through the current time and then about 1993 we have satellite optometry data was became available that's where you measure the absolute elevation of the ocean surface through time at thousands of stations or or points around the globe very high confidence and in this data here so the trend here uh very similar to the global average uh off the coast of the united states but we do have some anomalies i'll show you and these are the projections in the national climate assessment if you look at the literature the literature because of the rate of ice sheet decline there's a lot of uncertainty the high end of literature is here two meters and even in the IPCC report that just came out the assessment says that you know we're projecting up to one meter but the semi empirical model range is roughly twice that amount two meters but they have low confidence in those projections so for the united states climate assessment we selected this range here of for basically scenario planning but if you're building a power plant you might want to consider you know these higher ranges if you're just revegetating a barrier item you know it really doesn't matter which range you pick but we're encouraging people never to pick one number you're most likely to pick the wrong number consider a range because the science on the rate of sea level rise is advancing but we can't give you a single number we'll give you a range and that's what we suggest that people use for planning including for coastal zone management for example and you'll hear some more from the defense and the department of transportation how they use them and um you know the global rate is one thing that's what i just showed you but this is the absolute rate of change in mean sea level along the united states coast from our last global change national climate assessment in ca2 and you can see that the rate of change or the rate of sea level rises higher off the texas alabama louisiana coast parts of the atlantic coastal zone and in alaska where those big red arrows are and that's because the land is sinking so the tide gauge is showing the higher rate of being sea level rise but it's all relative to the to the change in the elevation of the land surface so in south texas and new orleans we got this much sea level rise a year okay but that's not just the global average that's the local change in land elevation factored into that is that bothering y'all on the ears can we turn it down some way can you hear me good okay all right uh this is the vulnerable you know translating this into vulnerability for the for the southeast and this is from the chapter here you can see parts of the uh the coastal zone are much more vulnerable depending upon the those local land use land elevation changes primarily and the substrate this is in south louisiana here and up in the very top where you can see the land kind of melting off into the gulf of mexico that is the gulf of pexico and when i started working for lsuc grant in 1975 this was all solid marsh and this is what it looks like today as a result of the combination of the sinking of the land surface and rising sea level and other processes that have to do with the way the river is managed this uh cemetery here was not built in open water obviously but that's what it looks like if you go through the coast you know you see all these relics from when the land was there and is no longer in south louisiana and other parts of the southeast we have coastal uh native tribes this one here is uh you can see in 1963 what the you know to see that solid wetland mass with that uh we call it an island today but it used to not be an island that is the homeland for the the the blexi of the chinamacha tribes of the home of indians and they're having to move because of the rate of land loss here is the road on the lower left there it used to flood maybe every 20 years and now it floods every year so basically the the tribe is scattering because they they can't safely live there they can't farm there anymore that's after hurricane katrina on the right and in the top see those dead trees that's salt water intrusion killing the forest so their their whole landscape is just falling apart around them here's a just some clips uh where they're appealing to the the parish council to help them relocate the islanders and remember it wasn't an island it was part of a of a connected coastal system just 30 or 40 years ago talking about the road another vulnerable area south florida highly vulnerable to sea level rise and in some of our our work that we've done in the area uh we see that the mangroves which are more salt tolerant you can see on the right there the little squares that's the amount of mangroves in south florida and as sea level is rising the blue line that's the tide gauge record look at the higher and higher quantities of mangroves so the key findings the final thing regarding hurricanes it's not one of the three major things we've mentioned but it is a huge driver in the southeast in the past these are the two main conclusions i think are relevant to the southeast we have observed a substantial increase in the intensity frequency and duration of storms tropical cyclones particularly in the strongest categories four and five since the early 1980s when we started having satellite data available so we're confident in these statements the increases are linked in part to higher sea surface temperatures and by late century an increase in the number of the strongest hurricanes is expected with more rainfall associated with those hurricanes lowline gulf and atlantic coastal ecosystems will systems will erode more rapidly if this continues if any of you all are from alabama this is uh dolphin island pre-hurricane island Ivan this is post hurricane Ivan and this is using some of our lidar imagery all those little red dots or those are houses that's the road running east to west and uh this is post Katrina what was left and this is what it looks like on the ground so this is the consequence of rising sea level combined with an intense storm as a result of these sort of processes in the southeast we've got the the most frequent the most costly climate disasters weather related disasters in the united states but people are now understanding the facts and using that in planning this is in in south florida where they're actually starting to factor climate change into their adaptation strategy some states and some coastal communities have climate adaptation plans because of their knowledge of the science so with that great thanks Virginia um and as as we generally do at EESI briefings we will hold questions until the end when we open it up for discussion with um with our speakers and the audience so we are very very um uh honored to have with us today two representatives of the U.S. Navy and this is very very important because as we look at the southeast the U.S. Navy has immense amounts of installations investments that are very important to the navy very important to the united states in the southeast and of course the navy has bases around the world and is looking at the implications of climate the changes that we are already seeing those things that are uh uh forecast for the future in terms of thinking about a long-term planning and what needs to be done now in terms of responding to changes already very well underway so we will hear from two people as I mentioned from Roger Natsuhara who is the principal deputy assistant secretary for energy installations and environment with the department of navy and prior to his work in this particular role where he oversees department-wide policies all the procedures strategic plans for installation safety energy and environment prior to that he also had worked for NOAA where he was responsible for the management and policies well I'm glad that we have all sorts of communication going on because that's really important as we think about what we need to do in terms of learning about climate um where he was responsible for the management and policies of all real property facilities and logistics programs our other speaker from the department of navy is rare admiral select Tim Gallaudet who is deputy oceanographer of the navy and he brings terrific background in oceanography graduating from the naval academy and then going on to get his phd in oceanography from Scripps institution and he had previously served at the um as a superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory and then joined the chief of naval operations staff in 2009 where he is among other things the deputy director of the navy's task force on climate change good morning and thanks for inviting me i really appreciate it and i apologize for being a little bit late today we can go to the next slide for the department of navy we have bases all over the world but about 70 percent of our bases you would expect are along the coastlines so sea level rise climate change is a real concern of ours not only from the operational what we have to do from an operational side of protecting this country but our installations along the shore i'll talk a little bit about some of our other bases that that are along that are not along the shore but we also are experiencing the effects of climate change and i think you're gonna hopefully see that this is a serious issue for us but the message i think i'm really want to present to you is that we are part of the community we cannot solve this independently and just look at the navy bases because we are so dependent upon the the community at large that a solution for us doesn't work independently it has to be a with the community a really coordinated decision on how we go forward on these things and these are just some of the executive orders and the qdr is the quadrano defense review every four years dod we take a look at all our mission that we need to look at and climate change has been discussed in the last two qdr's for us and the dod climate change adapt adaptation road map is a another internal policy that we've been working on next slide please so what we're what are we doing in the department of navy the different levels the senior sustainability council we're part of that with the administration dod has their own climate adaptation workshop and the navy the navy task force climate change and ammo that will speak more about that i'm sure next slide please so what do we expect as we all expect sea level rise and storm surges increasing the frequency the changing precipitation patterns global changes and the as a recent event in pennsycola our widening field we experienced a five and year flood there uh we the amount of rain was uh cause of damage below so i'm going to talk a little bit about why you know i mentioned about the uh the how we need to work with the communities uh and we really kind of look at it i kind of look at it and i think we're i'm trying to get the department uh to look at it really kind of two discrete uh buckets i'll say that the long term uh sea level rise uh that's really a long term and what are we going to do about that we really can't put in our own uh design criteria of protecting the bases because everything we we use and i tell folks all our that the bases don't work without our civilian workforce most of our merry sailors and marines live off base all our contracts live off base but we're dependent on the infrastructure of the cities and communities around us water sewage normally uh electricity but the road system so if those aren't functioning our bases can't function uh so if an area is going to be flooded out uh in the long term we're probably going to have to leave just like the rest of the community so spending a lot of money and planning to protect the base for sea level rise if the community can't protect the community it really doesn't make sense uh to do it and i think those are the discussions we're having within a department of you know people have asked us are you spending money what are your design criteria uh my answer keeps coming back is we really have to work with the whole interagency and the communities on that because there are certain things that we can do uh so on the the second side the storm surge is really the discrete uh weather events there are certain things that we can do uh and we are doing uh to plan for those but it's not as extensive i think what some people would think we should be doing uh we'll do we're in discussions like things like our mechanical equipment our data centers and those kind of things do we put those instead of having them on the bottom floors that we typically do of raising those up maybe put them on the second and third floors so when you do get these uh events of flooding storm surges at least your mechanical equipment your your IT centers aren't going to be damaged it'll be easier to reconstitute uh but as far as uh planning for weather discrete weather events uh we're we're not immune to the same damages outside of the community uh we've seen that in some of the good examples uh you know the the big example in Japan the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant you know they have that in all our nuclear power plants in this country too they have backups but when they're right next to it you have such a catastrophic event like that you're going to lose all your backups too and so for us to spend the monies to put those backups in it it may not make sense we do have emergency backup generators on all our critical loads but even those in an event like that we would lose those but in reality what have you seen in Katrina, Sandy uh is we're part of the community and so we're not going to operate the bases normally uh in our normal operations during the recovery phase but the getting ready for a storm during the storm uh we tend we sorted the fleet the fleet our aircraft we dispersed so so if we know a storm's coming we leave the area we encourage our families to leave the area uh just like everybody else so the base is going to be at a minimal manning so for us to spend a lot of money uh to to plan to have the bases running normally normal operation uh probably doesn't make sense uh we don't have that those are the discussions we're having because it's very expensive to do that um and then during the recovery we're with the community we're normally open the bases up to to have FEMA to be able to stage things other agencies to stage their equipment we'll bring in emergency generators from other areas and my personal opinion I think that's the right thing to do because we have all these assets dispersed and it's probably better because we can get them in fairly quickly uh instead of having each base stage because we're probably going to lose it in a disaster uh in a weather event disaster uh so those are some of the policy discussions we're having internally of what should we do how much money should we spend on on our bases but we're also seeing uh getting away from the the shoreline we're seeing uh the effects of climate change are on our other bases an example uh just recently in the last weeks uh in the southwest because of the the droughts are having in california and the severe uh water shortage out there the changing climate the change uh camp penelton has uh it's it's annually now that they they were spending lots of money and time fighting fires back uh because of the dry conditions out there it's starting to affect the amount of training we can have because if you've seen the news a lot of the uh assets the marines are providing helicopters which is the right thing to do to help fight the fires in the community which is also because it's pushing up right up against the base too uh so we've had fires on camp penelton like I said almost every year now for the last few years because of the dry conditions our master jet base in the central california and lamore uh because of the drought there is we're surrounded by uh agriculture which is a great place to be for a jet base because of all the noise but because of the the the droughts the farmers aren't able to get the water to to to grow crops when that happens uh we get the the fields become infested with uh little critters the little critters attract birds birds and jet airplanes don't go well so it affects our training uh so there's a lot more birds out there because we're not the farmers aren't able to grow uh so all these things combine are a big issue for us uh so it's just not the sea level rises these climate changes are really affecting us uh our ability to train and do what we need to do uh throughout the united states so you know not just the coastal areas concern us our drier climates we have big bases uh and training areas in in the desert areas but with water it's becoming a real issue out there i know the army has one of their bases that are this is a really critical need all these things affect uh your your military uh next slide please uh so what are we doing uh we're actually we started an assessment a three-tiered assessment of all our bases back in uh 2013 we expect to have that done in 2015 uh it's uh it's a two-year process that we're going through to try to look at all the vulnerabilities and discuss what do we need to do uh on these things and uh and like i talked about we're really trying to push this whole community approach that we cannot solve these things in isolation to ourselves because like i said our bases aren't going to work without the community working uh roads rare roads without that we we cannot operate and so uh as you saw in some of the earlier pictures uh if we come an island the base is really not not functional we just couldn't function like that uh next slide please uh so where we're at where we're moving to we're really at the early stages uh we're starting to get into some much more deep discussions on this because on the surface uh it seems like every conference i've gone to i've been asked how come the navy isn't doing this how come well because we're really part of the community we need to work with the communities uh to make sure their planning is aligned because if it's not like i said we just aren't going to be able to operate uh and so we're just trying to integrate our climate change into everything we look at we're looking at our our design criteria for our buildings uh different locations and trying to make adjustments as we can uh and as i mentioned from our perspective you know we need a common government-wide set of criterias and and that's what we're really want to push to i think that's it next slide and so i will turn it over to the admiral thank you sir the real name for animal select is captain but thank you sir my name is uh tim gallaudet i am the deputy oceanographer of the navy and i'm representing animal john white he's the oceanographer of the navy works for chief of naval operations and he also has another role as the director of this task force navy's task force on climate change um quick perspective is i uh helped establish that task force in 2009 and it was interesting next slide please um at the time when we went out into the wrestle building for example there was a lot of uh a lot of what we had to do was defend the science and i'm pleased to say that we're really just we're not talking about things anymore we're actually doing things so it's nice to have that perspective i'm not i'm going to brief to you what the navy is actually doing and mr natsuhara had given you a piece of that um i'll elaborate just a bit um but uh in in hindsight or you know looking back then we the climate change skeptics uh we're kind of had a pretty pitched battle and we we had to we had to really convince a lot of people that based on sound science that the navy had reasons to care about climate change and to act and it's nice to see now that most you know they're still there especially um in the congress there are those who doubt the science and doubt the even fact of climate change existing but i think we move beyond that and it's nice to see um anybody see the colbert report do you guys watch that i bet you're the kind of audience that probably sees that show so you might have seen tom freedman on it recently about his show years of living dangerously and uh he's talking about climate change too and that guy's got pretty powerful intellect so if he's thinking if he's considering it you know that the navy's in the right direction by considering it so next slide please so quick background this this task force on climate change established in 2009 currently we report to this gentleman uh in the whites there remel john or admiral john greener the chief of naval operations and and we are his uh point contact or point person for all things related to climate the biggest concern in 2009 was the opening of the arctic it's it's another ocean so the navy obviously cared and we wanted to address that first and foremost and we established a roadmap for the arctic in in 2010 to guide navy's actions investments um and um uh in efforts to be ready to operate in the arctic as the ice retreats we updated that roadmap just recently in 2014 and we also had a have a climate change roadmap we're actioning and it's aligned with the current dod climate change adaptation roadmap so this task force consists of a number of people on the navy staff we partner with the coast guard the office of naval research and noah and we engage with the interagency community the government and academia and scientific institutions to inform us and ensure that all our all our efforts are based on sound science um uh dr briquette i applaud you your contribution to the uh national climate assessment um personal story here you guys have a little chart in there that talks about the katrina diaspora do you recall that have you guys seen that that little graphic so i'm one of those the little part in san diego is probably my my family i went at least one of the part of that dot because i was on the gulf coast when katrina hit and so our house was totally leveled and a 35 foot storm surge is something serious to consider and um but at any rate uh so i understand i understand you know installation vulnerability quite well from a personal perspective um so but sound science like the national climate assessment is guiding what we do next slide please so in a big picture sense and i know we're focused on the southeast and in in in this venue but but this is this is why the navy cares in a big picture sense of course we use nep tunes trident here is the appropriate icon we're in the navy you know go figure and uh and we're talking about the lower prong today the infrastructure in the southeast but as i mentioned the arctic is is one of our most important considerations it's an operating area that we want to ensure remains safe and stable stable and secure and there's much kind of hype and depress about potential militarization of the opening of the arctic and that's just not our approach we're we have very strong collaborative relationships even with the russians at least in the arctic not in the black sea maybe but in the arctic and um and so we are using this opening area we viewed as an opportunity to increase our our partnering with other nations and then there's a global security aspect of climate change impacts that we have to consider i i i recommend you all look online for a recent report by an outfit called the center of naval analyses cna the the report is produced by a group called their military advisory board a number of uh four four four star admals and generals and and others who uh are assessed the the national security implications of climate change and the recent report uh found that the that from the the the previous report of 2007 they under forecast the the rate of security risks and the impacts physically were happening faster than they thought and the security risks were growing for example they they provide several vignettes like syria was linked very the the civil war in syria is linked very tightly to the years of drought that has been experienced in the rural areas and that that forced a mass migration of people into the urban areas and they were disaffected and had no work and now you have that mess that's occurring there now so climate related and then the report concluded that we'll probably see more of those and that's the us navy from a national security standpoint cares about that and so that's the big picture why next slide uh sea level rise is an important element of this and as mr not so far i mentioned we we have we have challenges that we we must address in a whole community approach to ensure our our infrastructure remains resilient but at the same time you know we can't build to the 500 year storm so we also have to build a capability to respond so with respect to these challenges there there are also opportunities and i i have to i like to move the discussion of all the gloom and doom with respect to climate change a way to the how can we you know how can we do something positive with it and there is there are things partnering with allied our allied nations or or emerging partners and helping them build a response capability is is a great opportunity for us for example the recent relief efforts of uh associated with typhoon hyan in the philippines the navy was the first on the scene with our marine corps brothers and sisters and that was an opportunity to help show the philippines and build build their response capacity and this will be a long-term effort but uh we can do that throughout the world and there are a number of emerging nations that we that are that are developing and that we if we forge close ties with and help them respond we can we can make them more resilient in kind next slide so the we support the department of defense being a part of the department and three of the main efforts that we're contributing to the navy are are assessing vulnerability and the three-tiered this is a three-tiered approach that mr. nasuhara approached we've developed a very detailed uh methodology with a number of uh supporting organizations like the army corps of engineers uh we're in the navy are also focused on the prediction aspect uh dr burkett had mentioned that with sea level rise that there's a kind of a wide range of uncertainty and we have the capability as a nation to drive down that uncertainty and and so that we can make better planning and and resourcing decisions you have i'll talk to it in an an upcoming slide and then the last piece is taking our vulnerability assessments and and developing planning scenarios for the different ranges of potential climate impacts like like sea level rise of rises of one two and more meters that kind of thing so we we the scenarios are what we're developing are are intended to kind of give us the range of options that we can consider and do the cost benefit analysis so i'll talk briefly on these and i think and i'll be able to get it done in time here next slide so for our facility vulnerability assessments we have a pilot project for the hampton roads area circled in the red there and our intent is to basically export the the processes and approach of of that assessment so all of our facilities in the ensuing years to come and so this this pilot is going to be a model that we hope to use and apply across the conus and then even outside the continental us next slide uh the hampton roads area as mr. nazi hara mentioned is a very vulnerable area and that's the focus of this pilot we're partnering with the old men in university there and again we're bringing in we're forming a group kind of in a construct like a joint interagency task force of local city um and industry types to help inform and contribute uh next slide because in in this eye chart here sorry a little complicated this shows the extent of interdependencies with different sectors just to address the multiple problems for example that a a carrier peer may have to face with respect to rising sea levels and extreme events so you you probably can't see very well but this is this just sort of maps out if i want to provide steam to that peer uh the different things that cross over not only cross the base to outside the base that i must address the climate change impacts on to ensure that's resilient so um bottom line is that there are many people that will contribute many sectors that will contribute to this and that's therefore this whole community approach next slide this is the prediction piece i mentioned and all those logos are people who spend tens of billions of dollars on climate prediction except for the navy because we don't have that kind of budget for it but there is a national capability that exists but is fractured and it is our effort through the something called the earth system prediction capability to unify climate and weather prediction so it's operational and can provide decision makers the right information that drives down drives down uncertainty next slide so finally just to conclude the navy is acting that's my message here we are doing things we are assessing the scope of problems and we are changing our policies and plans secretary or pardon me admiral greenert is behind this uh secretary defense hagel also is behind this through the dod climate change um adaptation plan and of course the administration with the documents that mr. natsuhara had briefed on the first slide is is driving it all from the top we need the support of this other group of people in that funny shaped building and ultimately they'll drive from the political will of the people which are increasingly less likely to want to shell out the money for these kinds of what they view as long term not really immediate efforts and so that's a campaign we all together have to address and move out on so i'm happy to take your questions after the end of the presentations thanks thanks carol thank you and i hope you are all storing up lots of questions and comments and i think it's it's also very important very um i think compelling for all of us to understand how what you're doing and in terms of the the leadership and the planning the thinking that you're doing is really important in terms of helping communities understand and figure out what does make sense for everybody because we literally are all in the same boat together so we are now going to take a look at our transport sector and the vulnerabilities that that are being examined are being looked at in the southeast and to talk to us about that a little bit this morning is rob kafelenos who is the environmental protection specialist at the department of transportation's federal highway administration and and i know that rob has been looking at all of this for a number of years with regard to leading some of these climate change efforts at the department of transportation working across the department as well as with his colleagues at fhwa and again i think it brings up the whole situation that you were talking about um with regard to thinking about all of this infrastructure that is critical in terms of supporting all of our communities and our and whether it's our navy or army bases or whatever but all of the infrastructure that is vital in terms of basically supporting the community the economy everything to make it all work so it's all got to be thought about together rob thank you i think i need some more hands to hold a whole different things um that's okay i'm good thanks um so i've been at federal highways for about 12 years we've been focusing on climate change adaptations since i think just before hurricane katrina um this morning i'm going to talk about a few things talk about federal highway and dot goals as it relates to climate change adaptation i'm going to talk about a framework that we have for analyzing vulnerabilities and some pilot studies of it and then the last half of the presentation i'll focus on talking about the gulf coast two study which is immobile and some resulting uh tools that we have coming out of it so um at federal highways we have a pretty clear goal when it comes to climate change we want to see concerns tied to climate change adaptation kind of mainstreamed into our different processes and we kind of look at we kind of break up the work in both at both the system level and also the project level so at the system level we're talking about long-range planning at the metropolitan area by metropolitan planning organizations and state dotes and as well as asset management at the project level we're focused more on all the different processes that have to go into to create and build a piece of transportation infrastructure so that can include the environmental process preliminary engineering design construction operations and maintenance and the reasons that we care about this the reason we focus on this there's really two key reasons one is that we're concerned about safety transportation safety is a key goal of federal highways that's been a mainstay of the department too for forever and then there's also these large-scale financial investments across the country at the federal state and local level that need to be protected from future impacts of climate change so we have for both these efforts both the larger scale systems level goal we have a series of activities designed to support those and then a key products that are coming out of that the key product at the systems level is this this climate change and extreme weather vulnerability assessment framework and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes the golf course to study the pilot studies of this framework and then some other studies we have going on are supporting developing and filling out what's in in that framework and then at the project level we have it's a little bit more little quite a few different moving pieces going on but there our goal is to really update different engineering manuals and methods and procedures for engineers for designers and environmental people to use when they're designing projects and again we have a series of projects that go along to support these some of the same ones already mentioned then also we're starting up just now a large project to look at about 10 or about 15 to 20 assets across the country so that could be roads bridges and other things that are highway specific to understand how they're vulnerable and develop adaptation options at the engineering level to support those structures we also have a manual that's designed for coastal engineers to use when designing bridges and highways in coastal environments we're right now our engineering side is in the process of updating that to add in information tied to future extreme weather future climate change so including sea level rise and changes in hurricanes and coastal storms and then we have a series of hydrology and hydraulic engineering research efforts that are also underway so this is the framework that I was referring to this is actually the second iteration of the framework each iteration has a slightly different name but you can probably find the word climate and the word framework in it it's basically divided into three different pieces the first is and this is not rocket science it's pretty logical the first piece is divine defining project scope and that so that means somebody who's using the framework whether it's a local organization or a state would decide what their objectives are they would decide what the relevant assets are that they want to focus on do they want to focus on highways or do they want to focus on transit or both and consider the kinds of climate variables that are most relevant and then in the second phase they would find the climate information and get gather together all the information on the structures that they're looking at and use that information to assess the vulnerabilities and then the third stage is actually in some ways the most important which is why we put it in the very small print that you can't read but that's taking that information and pulling it into your various planning process processes whether it's long-range planning short-term short-term tips the transportation improvement programs or asset management or engineering so we've used this now in a series of pilot studies so the first series of pilot studies we had ran until 2011 and focused we created the framework and provided some seed funding well for five areas MTC in San Francisco the Oahu MPO the Washington State DOT New Jersey State DOT in Hampton Roads of Virginia they piloted the framework we got information from that and updated it and now we have 19 pilot studies going on as well across the country and that's what most of these green places are on the map in the second phase we've we've made an extra effort to to reach out to non-coastal areas as well so we're doing some interesting things with precipitation in New York State and Michigan and Iowa and Minnesota that are sort of new and somewhat cutting-edge I'd say and then we also have the Sandy Project in the northeast and then the New Mexico scenario planning New Mexico and then lastly the Gulf Coast 2 study and the Gulf Coast 2 is focused on mobile so I'm going to talk for the remainder of the talk about Gulf Coast and Gulf Coast 2 the Gulf Coast study is divided into two phases the first phase focused on climate vulnerabilities across the Gulf Coast region from Houston Galveston to Mobile Alabama it's a multimodal and both of these are multimodal studies I work with federal highways but we run the studies for the department so it focuses on all the different transportation modes or most of the transportation modes within the department we've had a lot of cooperation on the project especially the second project which focuses on mobile we've been working very closely with the the South Alabama Regional Planning Commission the state DOT and the county transportation folks we've also had a lot of cooperation with the USGS and Virginia's people focusing on the science so the this study is broken down into four tasks the first two tasks are already complete the first task was designed to to isolate the most key transportation facilities to the operation of transportation in mobile the second focus on identifying the climate effects and I'll talk a little bit about that next and then the third study is the study is the part they were almost done with right now and that's focusing on identifying the vulnerabilities across the transportation system in mobile and then also doing these very specific engineering analyses on 11 different assets there and the last task is developing the transferable tools so we're almost done with the study we should be done this summer just very briefly I'll talk about some of the climate effects information we put together we looked at basically for temperature and precipitation we looked at a series of three different scenarios a low a medium and a high we developed projections out across out to the end of the century over three different time periods 30 30 years each beginning in 2010 um as we would expect and I said I think Virginia's information already supported we we found that there would be definitely a gradual ramp up across all the scenarios in terms of the number of hot days which we define as days above 95 or 100 degrees and also more extreme higher high temperature in when we looked at precipitation we also find that there would be increases in precipitation but that's the some of the model results were more mixed that there was a broad range of results across the models and that's something we find with precipitation a lot more than with temperature for transportation we're very concerned with specific thresholds so we did analyses to project what the 100 year 24 hour event would be and we found there too there would be increases but there would be some broad range across models for that so next I'm going to talk about sea low rise and storm surge we developed 11 different storm search scenarios for mobile we based the storm search scenarios on two historic storms that were very important to the region and also to mobile so we started off with Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Georges Georges and Katrina were about equally bad for mobile but Katrina is the one that gets the headlines because it it affected a much broader swath of the Gulf Coast region we took those two storm tracks we adjusted the tracks to to to account for different possibilities for storms so that the storm surge track went just to the west of mobile we added in information for some of the scenarios to increase the intensity of the winds tied to the way that climate change can affect is thought to be able to affect coastal storms in the future and then we added in for some of the scenarios different ranges of sea level rise because sea level rise can magnify the storm surge that can happen and it can also magnify the wave heights on on on top of the storm surge so we created these 11 different scenarios and looked at vulnerabilities to these different storm surges so next I'm going to talk about the vulnerability assessment part of this vulnerability is defined by the IPCC by others as well as a function of exposure sensitivity and adaptive capacity we chose an indicators approach to figure out how to analyze what those different factors could be as it relates to transportation in our study region and then we average those indicators to develop a scoring process that I'll talk about in a second so exposure is basically the climate information that we put together sensitivity is the extent to which a structure a road a highway can be affected by a given level of exposure and adaptive capacity is the ability of a system or an asset to adjust or to be repaired after the impact so these are examples of some of the indicators that we used for sensitivity the indicators vary by the type of asset you're looking at whether it's a pipeline or a bridge or rail link and also it varies by the climate effect so for temperature when we looked at sensitivity we considered things like the asphalt binder type certain asphalt binder types work better than others under high heat scenarios we considered traffic truck traffic volumes for precipitation we considered the conditions of culverts for surge storm surge and sea level rise we considered whether or not there was the present presence of sea walls considered the heights of bridges and the heights of approaches to the bridge and then for adaptive capacity this was a little tougher to deal with we considered things tied to the speed of recovery the speed of repair the cost of repairing something if it is destroyed in an extreme event and then lastly for adaptive capacity we looked at redundancy and redundancy that's a more of a system process to see whether or not there's redundancy in the system to take up slack if you lose a particular facility so all the all the indicators and all the vulnerability scores were calculated in a range of one to four for being the highest and so you can't see them because they're clouded out in red but the ones at the top are the ones that were considered the most vulnerable under the different scenarios and this is looking at two scenarios of the low end of storm surge and the high end of storm surge then this is just an example for storm surge vulnerability this is looking at the causeway across mobile bay storm surge vulnerabilities generally highest where mobile where the mobile river meets mobile bay also for lowline coastal roads any any facilities that are closest to the bay those are the ones that are considered most that came out through the analysis as being the most vulnerable I mentioned that we did a series of engineering assessments this is an example of one of them that we did some for for rails and for highways and some and some long scale bridges as well and we looked at those and applied different kinds of climate drivers to those to see different kinds of climate stressors to see how vulnerable they were and we ran through engineering processes to figure out the best ways to adapt those so just want to talk very briefly about a few implications and then I'll talk about some tools that we're developing the kinds of infrastructure that we build and that state DOTs and locals build they last for different periods of time local roads may last 20 years interstates may be designed to last for 50 years to 75 years and major bridges may be designed to last for 75 years to 100 years so it's important to consider how long your structure is designed to last when you make decisions about when to go in or how you would go into update it to make it more resilient to climate change we know the climate change will affect maintenance cycles and investment decisions on when and where to invest and when and where to go in and reconstruct a facility this adds uncertainty to the whole transportation planning and designing process but it's it's it's just another uncertainty so our goal is to try to mainstream consideration of climate in these processes as another one issue among among many that has to be dealt with we know that we can expect higher maintenance and operations costs going forward and also potentially costlier structures as we try to design them to be more resilient however adaptation can really save funding over the longer term I think the last speaker mentioned this point of trying to get people to think longer term about things as opposed to just the next funding cycle our goal is that people will think more about solutions that will last over the long term that can save funds and also consider the fact that it tells us it's very important to focus on proactive strategies that can protect things before disasters happen and really avoid the disasters so lastly this is a list of the kinds of tools that we're developing out of Gulf Coast we have a couple of I'd say five different tools that we were really excited about the first two are basically spreadsheets or documents matrices to help people when they're looking at their the transportation infrastructure in their region to gauge what is critical and what is not critical so they can go in and decide what is the most critical infrastructure to whatever their functions are that they care about for their further state or for their city next is a sensitivity matrix this is designed to match up different kinds of climate effects temperature and precipitation storm surge along with different kinds of infrastructure to identify what thresholds matter for those different structures so they know what kinds of information they need to collect when they're doing the climate work and then as I mentioned we have a series of documented engineering studies going and looking at vulnerabilities and identifying ways to adapt them and then last two we have a CMIP climate data processing tool this is a tool that basically summarizes work that we did in a year and a half in an afternoon in some respects it basically goes in and downloads downscaled climate projections for temperature and precipitation puts them in a spreadsheet and allows you to calculate specific variables some of which we used in our study from OVO and it's just for temperature and precipitation and lastly is the vulnerability assessment scoring tool the vulnerability assessment scoring tool is basically a large spreadsheet that allows that helps a user go through and do a linear kind of analysis of vulnerability to the further structures all these things will be posted on our website this summer and that's it I think amount of time so thank you thanks Rob and I want to thank all of our speakers for kind of laying out and Virginia do you want to for for laying out this whole picture of what it is that we are both facing and also efforts that are underway to help us all think in a clear fashion about what the implications are and how we might best plan and and adapt and and mitigate some of these efforts so let's open it up for your questions or comments and if you could please identify yourself Hi Chris Trent US Geological Survey and I wanted to ask Captain Gallaudet if you could elaborate a little bit more about the the unified prediction activity that you had described specifically some of the successes you've had but also maybe the challenges that you have yet to overcome sure so yeah I had to kind of fly through that slide because when somebody was holding up a three minutes card yes so the the Navy is underway we have committed about we have a plan to spend about 45 million dollars over a five-year period to increase our operational weather and climate prediction capability we have an area that's focused on Arctic and sea ice coupled ocean ice and atmospheric prediction capability we are partnered with the US Air Force and NASA and DOE and and NOAA the degree that everybody is participating is is somewhat limited currently you know I I'll specifically mention that the Department of Energy and that some of their national laboratories you know they have very large super computing capability and run very detailed climate very very capable climate prediction systems and and we're working to bring them on board so it's the idea is that we like to have a capability that with quantified uncertainty but reduces uncertainty of current tools and improves our prediction out from zero hours to 30 years and so we can look at inter-seasonal you know I think NOAA has recently released their forecast for the hurricane season I believe we could do better if we take a whole of government approach we being this this group of people NOAA included and because I think historically there those those forecasts are kind of hit and miss the Navy would find great value in knowing having a very let's say a less uncertain understanding of what what the hurricane and tropical cyclone forecast for the season would be as just one example so the this is this effort continues to move forward whenever we go to the hill we like to talk about it and we hope it secures a little more support does that answer your question great okay what I felt is what I failed to see in your brief was with all the data that you have do you accommodate the local communities that might be in a catastrophic event uh to describe evacuation routes for instance well this is this is partly partly answering I mean the what we do here is we're doing different studies to help support areas that want to do this kind of planning so we work with local and metropolitan planning organizations we work with them we have tools that help them do these things in the study that I was referring to there's a whole process for identifying critical infrastructure and as part of that is identifying evacuation routes and disaster recovery routes so in that sense we work with them and help help them to put that information together and make decisions about how to protect those kinds of facilities so it's their responsibility in essence means you're providing them data by who provide them tools and information you know so you know I we're probably different from the navy and different from other areas we're a very um decentralized organization there's the the larger do t that's the federal highway part that I work for and then we provide um tools and information and funding to states and and and do to states and locals to help do these things the comments okay I'm terry hill with the passive house institute you know there's it's very exciting to hear all these um tools that are being developed uh they have a huge impact on buildings on future utility grid designs etc how are these tools being going to be brought together so that we can get an overall view of this you know it seems to me to be lots still pretty stovepipe but the tools of if they pan out uh pretty exciting and have wide application you might all want to go ahead I'll start I mean I'm I think that under the the latest executive order from November 1st there's a whole effort underway to try to centralize that it's not something I'm personally working on but Virginia and the and the navy may know more about it before the the navy the the DOD has what's called UFC's unified facility codes and uh that's uh centralized with our DOD uh so all the services follow that uh but that's somewhat limited uh just to the DOD facilities um there is an interagency process that the D are my DOD counterparts sits on uh be honest I'm not exactly sure how far they are like I said in my brief I think we're still in our early stages of really and I kind of have joking with my folks you know as an engineer you give me a problem we'll solve but you gotta give me the right problem to solve and so I look to Tim and his organization and we really need to know what do you want us to design to uh is it a one meter rise where an over what period because until we know what we're supposed to design to uh and federal higher has the same issue that uh we don't want to get too far ahead of anyone so the scientists really have to kind of tell us what what should we and that's to me the whole the interagency and administration everyone has to agree that this is good to be the criteria you everyone needs to design to female will have to adjust their flood planes maps and that's what we really designed to yes um in my last slide I had a picture of the guys in Florida holding up the map and doing planning and I thought I really ought to put something in there about the federal strategy because this administration uh and I've been working on this for 23 years first IPCC and the first national climate assessment many years and I see more of an effort as more of an emphasis in the department interior now all of the bureaus have to have a climate adaptation strategy the cabinet level has this climate adaptation emphasis and so and we're we just reveal or uh let's uh posted this uh GCIS this global change information system through the US global change research program so it is that DOT develops for example need to be shared with the folks in the Navy doing the similar work so we don't reinvent the wheel and that the science you know from a science perspective that that we can provide you if you ask a certain question that we can give you an answer in practical terms that you can use so yes there is this huge national federal climate adaptation strategy that's being implemented you know as we speak and they meet monthly in department area you can hold on to that okay any any other questions or comments John Michael hi John Michael Cross with EESI and I had a question about the timelines of the projects in Hampton Roads and then also in Mobile uh what's the uh what is the timeline to both get information out and then in in Hampton Roads to actually make some changes to the basis thank you so I'm lucky and fortunate to be joined by the guy who knows more about this than anybody and gave me all the information I talked to Commander John Marburger these are our climate affairs officer on the Navy staff and he's been the key point of contact for the Hampton Roads pilot hi yes so the Hampton Roads area pilot project is going to be a two-year project the first year is going to probably be a process of coalescing everybody all the partners down there and then so at the end of two years short answer to your question two years is about when we should have something focusing in on methodologies on how we plan to bring everybody together and then get sea level rise forecasts uh and everything to actually begin to start adapting to climate change he's the brains behind the operation for the project in Mobile the first half of the project is already done and so the results are already posted so if people are interested in learning how we focused on criticality and how we um did worked on the climate information that's available now the assessment of vulnerability should be done and it's already done but it should be posted on our website this summer and then the rollout to finalize the study and kind of spread the information about the results what happened later in the summer and then our pilot projects the 19 ongoing pilot studies those should be wrapping up at the end of the year and results would go online early next year Rob I also wanted to ask you in terms of thinking about um sort of all of the different kinds of transport in the Gulf region because you've got everything in terms of all of the the freight in terms of barge traffic all of the pipelines as well as highways uh uh you know airports you know that there is so much railroads uh also critical in terms of movement of freight that supports everything and a little bit about how that is being looked at in an integrated way yeah um so part of why we picked Mobile so for the second this is phase two of the Gulf Coast study we wanted to find the right place within the region to do this study and part of that is having willing partners who are interested in the topic and we found that in Mobile and a few other places um but Mobile has had the right combination of not being too large some places are just too large and would have been too difficult to do the study but Mobile has a good cross section all the different kinds of transportation modes we were most interested in so in addition to highways and transit um the ports are very important there's barge traffic that's very important um there's pipelines that run through the region both above ground and below ground there's a lot of um I think some class one railroads facilities that run through Mobile so that's part of why we picked that area in doing the study we we had better luck with some modes than others the private sector modes some of them were less willing to share information so we did have some some issues with that but in the end we were able to get some good information from for the ports on the railroads partly tied to how things were done um tied to some of the publicly owned infrastructure in in the in the port of Mobile um but we purposely chose Mobile partly because it has such a big um cross section of these different kinds of infrastructure good question right uh and Mr. Natsuhara I wanted to ask you um as you talked about how important it was that the Navy couldn't address these issues alone in terms thinking about your faith your your facilities your bases and because it is so dependent upon what the community can really support and in terms of really working together on that so I was just curious in terms of where you are where the department is uh in terms of those conversations with communities the receptivity is this is this going forward in a pretty broad way in a lot of places where you do have facilities or what's happening right so like I said we really are in the infancy on our side because we're really at the end of the process it's all it's just like your home it's whatever it's zoned for that's what we built to so there's there's lots of planning documents that you have to follow you know the floodplain map and to those change nobody is going to change their design criteria uh in the communities you know insurance companies are based on those FEMA flood maps uh you know the all the planning documents whether it's the navy whether it's a commercial whether it's your private home it's all based on all these fundamental plant planning documents that other agencies are responsible for uh so you know how much water is available is there sewage all those things have to be considered right when you plan but if those don't change it's tough for not not only the navy but the whole community to change because nobody's going to finance you nobody's going to give you insurance so it's a very very complex decision uh because nobody can fund this themselves uh in cash uh it's there's so many how the taxes are collected and so people ask well how come you guys aren't changing because we don't have a basis to change our design uh because there's like I said all these fundamental documents and planning criteria so if you ever try to build a house or renovate your house you would understand going to to try to get a building permit they would ask you to do this this this and if you didn't meet all these codes you're not going to be able to do it uh or you're not going to be able to get financing uh if you if you can pay for it yourself and and live off of the grid essentially uh you don't have to meet all those criteria but we don't control those all those criteria and that's why it's tough for us in the navy a lot of them do d to say well how come you guys aren't moving forward well because I kind of joke with his boss that well you have to tell me and get everyone to agree that the title change in mayport or Jacksonville uh is going to rise x amount over this period of time and then we can work to get all those plant planning guys to say look that's what we have to design to that's what the shoreline is going to look like what are we going to need to do but but I can't ask our people that write our design criteria and code to say pick that number because one congress won't fund us because they're going to ask what what did you base that on and I wanted to ask I'm okay do you want to add anything to that or um no I'll I just have to um concur with mr. not so hard on that is if we're you know we are dependent on a lot of different information a lot of different people and participants so it's for this climate change stuff can be like herding cats at times um and and we need but we have to act so we we we we desire a total uncertainty we desire a total uncertainty but we are going to have to act in the face of uncertainty regardless and um but so it's getting the people who write these foundational documents and codes uh is it's not an easy thing so it's um that's just a challenge we're facing so again it is not a whole of government and whole of community uh approach is necessary and unfortunately we had thought that we were going to have the mayor of Norfolk here with us today and then he was not able to participate because I think you're in terms of what you were saying about bringing those other voices in is a critical piece of of helping work these solutions um and to help move move action forward um any last comments or questions okay then I please join me in thanking our wonderful