NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has about $32 billion in structures and facilities across the US. About two-thirds of the land that NASA manages is less than sixteen feet from mean sea level, and much of it is near the coasts. Their largest spaceport is the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which stretches 72 miles along the Atlantic. So the threat of harmful climate change, and rising water levels specifically, is very real for NASA.

According to one recent study, “warming pressure on the Antarctic ice sheet could help push sea levels higher by as much as five or six feet by the end of this century.”  NASA’s own Climate Adaption Science Investigators group evaluates risks for all federal agencies. They have predicted that sea levels will rise five inches to two feet by 2050 and could cause widespread problems for NASA’s coastal sites.

NASA also impacts climate change. They provide data from the satellites which orbit earth; they also help increase awareness of the growing urgency for climate change. In fact, NASA has examined the effects of climate change for almost ten years now.  Strategist Kim W. Toufectis, who leads NASA’s master planning program, told the New York Times that by 2007 “we had to acknowledge that we should recognize climate change and extreme weather as a formal risk that we should be actually managing.” NASA has the abilities to make forecasts based on data, “shame on us if we are not capitalizing on that,” he added.

Everyone agrees that warmer water and air caused by climate change will likely lead to more destructive storms.  After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, NASA spent almost $3 million to rebuild a long dune to replace protective sands that had been washed away. And because NASA is in a delicate wildlife refuge, repairs weren’t as easy as simply moving some dirt around with a bulldozer.

NASA has made preparations for climate change including hardening the facilities against rising sea levels with barriers and structures made for storms and flooding, or even a strategic retreat. Each of these strategies will no doubt be very expensive, although we do not know how expensive just yet.

Indeed, water is coming.

 

Sources:

Schwartz, John, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/science/nasa-is-facing-a-climate-change-countdown.html?action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0 (accessed April 5, 2016).

Gillis, Justin, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/science/global-warming-antarctica-ice-sheet-sea-level-rise.html (accessed April 5, 2016).

Carlowicz, Michael, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/201508_risingseas/ (accessed April 5, 2016).