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| Sun, 9th Aug 2020 15:53:00 |
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Global warming is having a costly, and dangerous, impact on key military bases in Alaska |
EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska –– When warming temperatures melted the frozen ground under the munitions repair facility here years ago, the foundation shifted, causing deep cracks to spread across the thick concrete walls.
Over time, the repair bay for missiles and other explosives began to separate from the floor, forcing the 12-foot blast-proof doors out of alignment so they could not be properly closed, according to Defense Department documents and interviews with base construction officials.
Then the entire facility, built on a sloping hillside and hidden in a patch of dense trees, started slowly sliding toward the base of 10,000 people working and living below.
In Alaska, it is not only wildlife and native communities that are deeply affected by warming temperatures, but also Cold War-era U.S. military bases. Once facing closure, some of these bases, like Eielson, have become strategically important again for their proximity to Russia, China and North Korea and the vast Arctic resources that global warming has made accessible to competing nations for the first time.
“Alaska is the most strategic place in the world,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, said this spring in a statement announcing the arrival of the first two F-35 fighter jets among the two squadrons of planes to be based here, near the North Pole.
The detrimental effect of global warming is pushing up the cost of ongoing operations at three of Alaska’s four major U.S. military bases: Eielson, Fort Wainwright and Clear Air Force Base. All are located in the warming south-central swath of Alaska where patchwork or “discontinuous” permafrost exists and is prone to melting.
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