Florida

East Central Florida

East Central Florida is home to key assets to U.S. national security such as Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Patrick Space Force Base, the Naval Ordinance Test Unit (NOTU), Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD), and an Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) complex.

One hundred nineteen miles of Atlantic coastline make the region vulnerable to flooding and rising seas. Warming temperatures pressure outdoor productivity and increase instances of extreme heat which complicate training cycles and impede U.S. military readiness and operations. Additionally, a regional vulnerability assessment showed that designated evacuation routes and major roadways are at risk from flooding.

Northeast Florida

Northeast Florida is home to several key military installations and hundreds of thousands of veterans. It is a crucial area not only within Florida but for broader US national Security.

Naval Station Mayport – Home to the 4th Fleet and third largest fleet concentration in the United States.

Naval Air Station Jacksonville – The third largest naval installation in the nation, home to 21,000 service members, including the Navy’s Anti-Submarine Weapons School.

Marine Corps Support Facility Blount Island – A port and logistics facility supporting Navy and Marine Corps deployments worldwide.

Northeast Florida is at risk from severe flooding, sea level rise, hurricanes, and extreme heat, all of which can disrupt training and affect readiness for military units. Between the St. Johns River and the Timucuan Marsh, the area is hydrologically complex and susceptible to storm surge as well as sunny day flooding from rising sea levels.

Recent resilience action on the part of the City of Jacksonville, like the hiring of a Chief Resiliency Officer, bodes well for the future. Progress will depend on complex coordination between the local government, state entities like the Department of Environmental Protection, Federal agencies like the Corps of Engineers, DoD, and FEMA, and even private organizations like the Pew Charitable Trust.

Investments in city infrastructure and updated building codes must be combined with multi-partner projects to keep Northeast Florida resilient in the face of climate change.

The NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer is a nation-wide map that displays relative depth for both sea level rise and potential coastal flooding impact areas.

Northwest Florida

Panama City and Northwest Florida became the unfortunate poster child for military installation susceptibility to climate change in 2018, when Hurricane Michael damaged 95% of facilities on Tyndall AFB resulting in $4.7 billion in costs to Tyndall AFB. Tyndall is the training hub for the most advanced fighter jet in the world, the F-22, several of which were damaged in the storm. This key training program was disrupted for over a month due to the hurricane.

Northwest Florida and the Panhandle are home to several other crucial facilities, including the Navy’s primary aviation training bases NAS Pensacola and Whiting Field, and Hulbert Field and Eglin AFBs, home to the Air Force’s Special Operations Command.

As hurricanes slow and become more frequent, the damage and risk to areas like the Gulf Coast of Florida will only increase. Hurricane resistant infrastructure on Florida bases is crucial. New facilities must be built to withstand storms and older facilities must be retrofitted to resist the increasing threat.

The NOAA Historical Hurricane Track map provides data on hurricane paths from as far back as 1851. It can be sorted by location, year, storm name, and intensity.

South Florida

South Florida hosts a number of military installations, including U.S. Southern Command, Naval Air Station Key West, and the U.S. Coast Guard 7th District Headquarters which is responsible for operations in Puerto Rico, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and 34 foreign nations and territories.

The region is vulnerable to various climate-related threats such as flooding from sea-level rise, extreme heat, and worsening storms. In 2019, the Senate Armed Services Committee identified Homestead Air Reserve base as one of the top-10 Air Force installations at risk to impacts of climate change.

To better understand the risks and vulnerabilities facing South Florida defense communities, the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation (OLDCC) awarded the South Florida Defense Planning Council funding through the Military Installation Sustainability program to conduct a Military Installation Resilience Review. This review will examine the long-term resilience and sustainability of the four major military installations in the region.

Tampa Bay

Home to MacDill AFB and two of eleven worldwide Combatant Commands, Tamba Bay is one of the most strategically important military locations outside of Washington D.C. It is also squarely in hurricane alley, suffers from increasing flooding, including on sunny days, and will be experiencing higher numbers of extreme heat days – all of which negatively affect operations and training on the base.

The Air Force has taken steps to increase base resiliency, including installing an independent power plant which can keep the base running in the event of outages outside the gate. The greater Tampa area has also taken several steps, including Resiliency Officers for each county and an infrastructure bill worth nearly $3 billion to fix drainage and flooding related to climate change.

The NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer is a nation-wide map that displays relative depth for both sea level rise and potential coastal flooding impact areas.