Rising seas may damage an important base tracking space debris in the coming decades after the Air Force ignored the potential ramifications of climate change.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the almost $1 billion Space Fence project in the Marshall Islands is placed on an atoll that could be damaged by intruding saltwater in coming decades. The report said the military and its contractor, Lockheed Martin, didn’t give serious consideration to the effects of climate change when picking a location for the base, despite warnings from local officials.
Curt Storlazzi, an oceanographer with the U.S. Geological Survey, said the atoll could be inundated by rising seas on a regular basis in a few decades.
“When you get to the point where water is going over the top of the island annually, it will affect a lot of daily life, whether it’s related to the Space Fence or other operations, like moving food around,” Storlazzi told the AP.
The Space Fence project is a $915 million radar base that will track about 200,000 objects floating in space once it’s operational in 2018. The base is 10 feet above sea level.
Sea water could harm the electronics in the base, power cables, sewer lines and other vital objects, according to the report. By the time sea water covers the island once a year, the island will be unlivable.
A civilian managing the project says the radar installation at the base is projected to last for 25 years, which would make the potential effects of sea level rise irrelevant, the AP reported.
