Sea Control - Sea Control 433 - Climate Change and Military Operations in the Arctic with Marisol Maddox

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Links1. Navigating Breakup: Security Realities of Freezing Politics and Thawing Landscapes in the Arctic, edited by Karsten Friis, Elana Wilson Rowe, Mike Sfraga, and Ulf Sverdrup, with Pavel K. Baev, Troy J. Bouffard, Marc Lanteigne, Marisol Maddox and Jan-Gunnar Winther, The Wilson Center and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, January 2023.2. Marisol Maddox’s Twitter Feed.

Hello, and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today, Jared Samuelson speaks with Marisol Maddox about her work in understanding how climate change is affecting military operations in the Arctic. Marie Williams edited and produced today's episode. SimSec is looking for a volunteer to join our technical team and support our web operations. We're looking for someone with a background in WordPress implementation and support, as well as knowledge in web hosting and networking. Some knowledge of identity management and security operations is also helpful. Please reach out to content at simsec.org to share your background and discuss. I would like to pause here to highlight our local chapters. Whether you are in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean,

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My guest today is Marisol Maddox, and she's joining us to discuss her chapter contribution to the report, Navigating Breakup, Security Realities of Freezing Politics and Thawing Landscapes in the Arctic. Her chapter contribution is entitled Implications of Climate Change for Military Operations in the Arctic, and that's what we're going to discuss today. So Marisol, welcome aboard. Could you start by telling the listeners a little bit more about your background, please? Yeah, sure. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here. So I did environmental studies in undergrad and was actually more interested at that time in agriculture and particularly in the role of land management practices in carbon sequestration and supporting biodiversity.

And it was really through this period of 10 years that I took between undergrad and when I went back to school for my master's in security studies, where I was working on farms and ranches in different parts of the U.S. and worked at Glacier National Park in Montana and really got exposure to the cryosphere and seeing the changes in the glaciers from 100 years prior to when I was there and then working so close to the land on farms and ranches, particularly in Southern California, I got exposure to some of the drought issues and the wildfire issues, that I started kind of thinking more about the climate research that I was reading about how the climate was supposed to be changing, and kind of what that would mean

for the basic factors that allow for the US to be secure as a nation, right. And this is something that made me then kind of think about how we think about homeland security. And obviously, post 9-11, it was very focused on counterterrorism for very good reason. But what became apparent to me was that those basic societal needs like, you know, food security, water security, housing are really essential to being able to then say, okay, and now I'm going to be an entrepreneur and contribute to a strong economy and you know contribute to you know to America's strength and and that was seemed like something that kind of needed to be explored more using more tools like anticipatory intelligence to understand how future conditions would not be well represented

by the past and that was why I did my security studies graduate work bringing the two together and because the Arctic is changing faster than anywhere it just was the obvious place to start this conversation in a way that could also really avoid any of the politicization issues around climate. Well, thank you again for coming on. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. Can you start for us then by quantifying just how much the Arctic is physically changing as a result of climate change. Yeah, absolutely. So the Arctic is the area typically defined as the region above 66 degrees north, but there are a lot of different technical definitions. But there are eight Arctic

states above the Arctic Circle, and that region takes up about 4% of the Earth's surface. And And even though the Arctic as a whole is actually changing, warming about four times faster than the global average, and the Arctic Ocean is actually acidifying four times faster than the global ocean average. And so that creates a lot of challenges because you have, you know, fish that are starting to move away from the equatorial regions more towards the poles. But because colder water acidifies faster than warmer water, there are different stressors that they're encountering and new predator prey dynamics. So there's a really immense change in terms of the ecosystems and the animals and the different dynamics and even the types of viruses or any type of, you know, sickness that animals may carry. They're going into new regions. So there's just a lot of changes that are very dynamic. so we're seeing things like permafrost which is traditionally permanently frozen ground that has an active layer that will thaw a bit in the summer but below that it would stay frozen

and permafrost makes up about 15 percent of the northern hemisphere and it is starting to thaw And this is creating runways that are buckling and roads that are buckling. It's creating these massive chasms that are opening up, particularly in the Russian Arctic, which are very visually dramatic because some of them go down, you know, thousands of feet. And these are not only resulting in dramatic changes to the physical landscape, but it's also, you know, creating this influx of things like methane into the atmosphere, which is a very potent greenhouse gas. it's also starting to basically bring to the surface the carcasses of animals and humans from like smallpox graveyards that are starting to be exposed and and there's a risk in terms of biosecurity of some of the pathogens that are starting to emerge because it's not just about what's coming out of the of the permafrost it's also about how it's treated in the lab right and in this time where we have concerns about things like bioweapons that that is a concern as well

and then there's also other um you know environmental hazards and and human health impacts so there are radon hot spots where uh natural uranium deposits in the permafrost that are starting to thaw are basically releasing high amounts of radon enough that it is actually a very large concern. And this is something that could even cause lung cancer. So being able to kind of understand some of the new human health impacts is really important. And then we're also just seeing more things, of course, like wildfire, you know, happening in places that were not typically fire prone, right? And seeing these things called zombie fires, which are essentially underground fires that can burn throughout the winter because they will smolder in this

dense peat that kind of allows it to stay alive and kind of insulates it from the cold. So we're just seeing immense changes in that way. So you laid out and then in some of your answers there, you talked about these first, second and third order effects. I think there is some sort of general understanding of what we mean by first, second, third order effects i'm going to move on here to i'd like to walk through some of the first order effects that you've identified and then have you kind of address what that effect is and then discuss sort of the follow-on to that second and third order effect so first being a precipitation change

sure so the dominant form of precipitation as humans have known it in the arctic has been snow and the the shift that we're seeing is that the snow dominant form of precipitation is actually changing to a rain dominant form and so what that's looking like now is basically seeing uh rain on snow events because we'll get these kind of these all of a sudden warm days in the winter in the arctic that you would never typically see and so that creates a lot more ice and this is just tremendously impactful for everything from uh you know caribou where we have seen mass die-offs of caribou because they can't get through the ice to eat the lichen that they subsist on in the winter um there was a mass die-off in the russian arctic and i saw pictures

and their hooves were literally worn all the way down because they had been trying to get through the ice and just like could not get through it. But from a military perspective, this is also just a very hazardous environment to be operating in. When you have more ice, there's just, you know, more hazardous conditions. And it also makes us question certain assumptions around things like underground infrastructure, which is something I noted in the chapter, where typically in the winter in the Arctic, underground infrastructure is buffered by a continuous snow layer.

And that actually helps to insulate it from these extreme cold temperatures. But now, as we're seeing these spikes where we'll get like a heat wave come through and you don't have that snow cover, then you might get an extreme cold right after you had a warm spell and there's less insulation for that below ground infrastructure. And so that's something that is really important to, you know, to question in terms of certain assumptions and what we can be doing to make sure that critical infrastructure is able to withstand some of those changes. so the next one i would like you to talk about is carbon cycling but can you first sort of explain what carbon cycling is i don't think that's quite a familiar term

for the rest of our listeners sure so basically there are these global cycles of of different elements right like like the carbon cycle the nitrogen cycle And then there's also, you know, these are connected to things like the water cycle. And so basically, the way that humans and animals and plants have evolved, we're not so cognizant of it, but everything we do is interacting every day with these cycles, right? And so basically, the way that the carbon cycle is being impacted in the Arctic is through things like, you know, land management practices or the way that wetlands are actually starting to go from a place where you would actually get a carbon sink to actually being a source. And it's the same thing with like peatlands or with the permafrost. When you had solid permafrost that was actually permafrost and permanently frozen, as it's supposed to be, it's a place that sequesters the carbon into a stable form in the ground. But as we're getting this thawing and significantly as the Arctic is transitioning to that more rain dominant form of precipitation, essentially the chemistry means that the wetter conditions actually create greater release of methane from the permafrost versus carbon dioxide. And that's just because when you have the presence of oxygen in a less wet environment, that's when you have the microbes that will be activated by the warm temperatures and they're digesting the material in the ground. But then they're what they release into the atmosphere is carbon dioxide. But when you have wetter conditions, you actually get different types of microbes that thrive in that oxygen poor environment. It's called like anaerobic decomposition.

And so basically when they are digesting this material, what they release is methane. And so that's a much more potent greenhouse gas. And so that ties directly into the amount of carbon that is then entering the atmosphere, which then is obviously, you know, contributes to the greenhouse effect and has a huge impact on both the carbon budget that we have to work with. in order to be able to meet the Paris Agreement goals of, you know, limiting warming, hopefully to 1.5 degrees Celsius and trying to not, you know, surpass two degrees Celsius. But that also is partially why we have been seeing changes that have been outpacing the models that have been trying to forecast when we might see certain types of changes. so we're seeing things happening faster because it's very hard to quantify the the permafrost changes that are because like i said it's 15 as a northern hemisphere we're talking about massive expanses of land and so having that ability to monitor the changes is really important

for being able to characterize it and then try to quantify it and then be able to forecast into the future and so that's something that scientists are working on but it's very challenging and you know carbon cycling is is extremely complex and it's something that we track through um three primary means so there's ground-based monitoring that can give you you know uh real like point source you know in situ data very specific and then there's um like atmosphere-based monitoring through things like planes that have sensors. And then you have space-based monitoring. And some satellites have methane monitors. But basically, the issue is that in terms of attribution and understanding where certain gases are coming from, the gases mix in the lower part of the

atmosphere. So from space, it can be really hard to have attribution of where something is coming from. What is the effect on the Russian Arctic? And how is that driving some of Russia's strategic decisions? Yeah, so Russia as a whole, because it's so big, you know, it's about 11, it's 11 time zones big, and about two thirds of Russia, including areas well beyond, you know, lower than the Arctic Circle are underlaid by permafrost. And so Russia has, you know, really significant exposure to the array of climate hazards just because of how big they are. So in the Arctic, they have issues like, you know, the impacts on infrastructure from permafrost thaw, but also, So, you know, they have a major coastline. And so they're dealing with not just the permafrost thaw, but actually erosion of the land into the sea, having greater like high impact precipitation events.

There was a really bad storm a couple of years ago that hit Vladivostok in the Russian Far East. And this is, you know, a very strategically important site for the Russian Navy and for the Pacific Fleet. And, you know, we're seeing just very severe impacts of ice, just, I mean, extreme buildup of ice and some of their military vessels that were knocking into each other. And, you know, so just having kind of more of these high impact storm events. And the issue is that basically, you know, before Russia further invaded Ukraine in February 2022, they had some younger people in Russia who were influential, who were starting to say, okay, look, we need to start thinking beyond the petroleum age and look at how we have longevity for the future. or a thriving economy. And so they were looking at things like, you know, expanding nuclear energy, working with Western companies on things like, you know, looking at wind energy and solar, hydrogen. And when they invaded, they not only lost, you know, basically most of those companies and that being able to learn from them and to innovate and to look for new opportunities for, global engagement in transitioning their own economy. But they also have isolated themselves

in terms of their ability to engage with a community that's very interested in working together to understand the extent of the climate risks that we're all dealing with. And in the Arctic, that's primarily within the Arctic Council and the working groups of the Arctic Council. They had wanted to work on one project in particular that had to do with biosecurity risks in the Arctic and being able to tie in some of the One Health model, which is basically, if you're not familiar with it, One Health is a CDC-recognized, brilliant systems approach towards really understanding the links and the inherent interconnectivity between human, animal, and environmental health. And so this is something that is directly linked to addressing the future risk for pandemic and how do we develop better monitoring and also just work together.

And so they really isolated themselves in terms of those partners as well. And basically, the reason that I talked so much about Russia in that paper is because a weaker Russia or a Russia that will be facing more disruption that it's increasingly poorly suited to deal with because of the lack of transparency. the fact that they have this vertical power structure that does not incentivize giving bad news up the chain you know there are obviously issues in terms of you know how much the people around putin can actually speak truth to power right but so if russia is going to be seeing a greater disconnect between the narrative that the kremlin puts out and the conditions on the ground, this is going to exacerbate some of those things like the domestic repression that they have been pursuing, and certainly learning from the way that China monitors their own people, and starting to implement some of those domestically in Russia. And that a weaker Russia

is not a safer Russia. And so this is something that I think is really important to understand, because there are ways in which, you know, beyond the impact of sanctions and all of the other ways that Russia is being challenged right now, they will start seeing more events, severe events at home that could challenge their ability to be the great power they think they should be. And and I would note here. So two things. One, that this also ties in with Russia's ability to maintain their status as a major grain producer, because in the southern parts of Russia, where they've traditionally had this real breadbasket, they will increasingly be seeing extreme high temperatures and drought combined with these heavy rain events, precipitation. that really impacts the soil fertility, right, especially when you have this real, you know, kind of industrialized agricultural model that they've been using, it's not really conducive to retaining the soil fertility. And so there are going to be a lot of challenges to their own

ability to maintain this. But what's very interesting that I've been starting to see in Russian news to their own domestic audience is just earlier this month in response to U.S. Congress basically saying the U.S. needs to kind of look through the debate about geoengineering and the potential for certain types of research and, you know, kind of looking at what are the options there? Should we be funding certain types of research? The way that Russia reported on that to their own people was saying the U.S. is developing a climate weapon that the U.S. wants to use against Russia specifically to inhibit their ability to be a major grain producer in 2080. So this is why I'd say like it's so important to take a real systems level approach because

it's not just about those direct impacts. It's about the narrative. Right. And and so, yes, Russia, if you look at climate models, their breadbasket region will be impacted, but they're going to say, oh, no, it's not climate change. This is, you know, weather weaponization by the United States and more NATO aggression. What sort of changes in human activity are we seeing in the Arctic as it warms? So it's really that combination of the area opening up plus Russia's just absolutely horrendous invasion of Ukraine that's basically driving the need for more NATO engagement in the region. And that's because NATO countries need to have the ability to operate in the Arctic. And the U.S. in recent years has really been, you know, realizing that we need to regain our cold weather operational capabilities. And we, you know, we've been exercising a lot more with our different allies and partners with Sweden and Finland soon joining NATO.

will have you know the the northern flank of NATO will have never been stronger but it's it's really important to show for deterrence purposes that if something did happen that we have that operational capability you know at the same time you know Russia is not looking for first of all to engage in another theater right they're kind of busy at the moment but also because of how strategically important the arctic is to russia and we saw that with their new maritime doctrine where the arctic was actually elevated to the number one priority strategic region it's also you know the place where their strategic subs are based out of right with the cola peninsula so this is not an area where they want to have kinetic engagement but it is an area where because

of the strategic importance and because of the way that their military is not performing as they expected. And, you know, they've been able to really buffer the impact of sanctions to a certain extent, but their ability to sustain that, you know, is questioned. And so it's because of the region being so important and they've really doubled down on their ambitions for the Arctic were likely to see more posturing from them, right? And even in the days leading up to February 24, 2022, they were, you know, conducting, you know, certain like weapons testing, and, and the Arctic is the place where they test a lot of these new advanced

weapons. And now, of course, with them leaving New START, there's concern about them potentially, actually you know resuming nuclear weapons testing in the arctic as well so so there's that angle of activity but there's also because the region is becoming more accessible you have fish stocks that are that are migrating north so you have kind of changes in in those those dynamics and areas further north that are now more accessible but you also have like i mentioned the arctic ocean acidification issues and so there are certain places where uh you know indigenous peoples who do subsistence hunting and fishing are having to basically go further um further offshore in order to look for certain, you know, sea life that they want to harvest. And so you have that plus you

have certainly a very excited, like tourism industry, we're having expeditionary cruises that are going up earlier and later every year. So basically, you're having a lot of different types of activities that are all valid, but there's going to need to be a real conscious effort at recognizing that these are all valid types of activities and where deconfliction can occur. It's really in our interest to do so. And I'm specifically referring to, you know, if the U.S. is or, you know, other nations are planning an exercise in the Arctic, you know, being aware of how marine life migration timing is changing and, you know, making sure that exercises are as de-conflicted as possible from marine life, because there's a lot of issues, not

just the acidification, but also, you know, the underwater noise pollution, a lot of different impacts that, you know, could affect the productivity of the blue bioeconomy, which is crucial to the economies of Arctic states, and also really important for food security as well. So a couple notes and then a timestamp for the listeners. So we're recording this on Saturday, March 25th. So there's stuff that's happened in the north there that we're not discussing because it hasn't happened yet. So a couple pieces of news that just came out that directly correlate with things that you brought up there. One was the announcement from Russia, I think it was today that they want to create a tactical nuclear storage capability in Belarus and then move weapons into Belarus and keep them there.

That seems like something that fits directly with what you were talking about, about resumption of nuclear testing, but also possibly some positioning of things. Even though that's like inside of Russia, where those nuclear weapons are is always of interest as a signaling thing. The second one was the announcement, I believe this was yesterday, of all the Nordic states agreeing to operate their air forces functionally as one air force in time of crisis. So when you talk about the way that NATO countries are responding to it, it's like I'm lumping Sweden and Finland in with NATO at this point, even though that's not technically accurate. That also seems to go directly to the point that you made in this, which was published well before that. So, you know, good job. Good job in seeing that one. But your report addressed Russia quite a bit. There was less on the U.S. and its Arctic partners and allies.

And we call that in our show notes here, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland. If I miss somebody, let me know. But what steps are those states taking beyond what you mentioned previously and what I just mentioned? How are they approaching a region from a military standpoint? Because you mentioned the U.S. Navy in particular has been pushing ships further north with more frequency. and operating an aircraft carrier north of the Arctic Circle for the first time in quite some time. That was just within the last couple of years that they did that. But what else is happening in that region?

Yeah, so we're seeing a lot more just allied and partner exercises occurring. Of course, we have, you know, Norway acquiring more of the P-8 aircraft for sub hunting. And when the UK recently updated their Arctic strategy, and one of the pieces that they specifically, you know, are prioritizing has to do with better tracking of Russian submarine activity. that's um you know extremely important and you know in in the u.s arctic like in alaska of course we now have the um 11th airborne division that's been re-stood up we have uh the you know the greatest concentration of air power based out of eielson air force base with our new fighters And and that's that just speaks to the the strategic geography of Alaska, because that's not a response to so much the Arctic security region concerns. That's just because that is the best location to launch a fighter to respond anywhere in the northern hemisphere within one sortie. and also for refueling is a really important site.

And, of course, Thule Air Force Base up in Greenland was really important for refueling and, you know, allied aircraft activity in World War II. So we see this real lineage of, you know, going back to 1935 when General Billy Mitchell famously said, whoever holds the Arctic holds the world. talking about alaska and the strategic geography up there so so we're really you know seeing a lot and in terms of the the climate piece we have canada that will be opening the new nato center

of excellence for climate change and security that'll be opening this year in montreal and You know, I'm sure that will have, you know, an Arctic component since the Arctic is changing faster than anywhere. And you just have new types of hazards that we have to be dealing with. But otherwise, you know, we see a lot more of the US sending, you know, every branch of the military up to, you know, with in Sweden, you know, in Lapland, we have them exercising. So it's really about just really regaining that that ability to operate in extreme conditions, in austere environments where you just don't have access to a lot of resources and you have some some infrastructure challenges. And of course, that kind of mountainous terrain. And so some of these capabilities, they're not just specific to the Arctic. Right. It's just austere environment, cold, mountainous, and there's a lot of places on Earth where you have those kinds of conditions. I think the really consistent language and messaging around an allied and partner-based approach is what really stands out. And even prior to February 2022, we had been seeing a real strengthening of Nordic defense cooperation. Of course, you have the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, which is really important for tying the Baltic and Arctic regions together, tying in those Baltic states.

So, yeah, so I guess I think the main thing is really the partner and allied-based approach. And then, of course, looking at defense industrial-based questions as well. And I think some of the issues that we've seen from Ukraine that have come up in terms of the ability to maintain supply and to kind of look at, you know, when you have a war of attrition, what it takes to maintain that. I think that's spurring a lot of questions around how there can be more international cooperation. Yeah, the other infrastructure investment that I thought of was the, I think it's mostly Canadian commitment to NORAD modernization, most of which from an infrastructure perspective is going to be up north where North Warning System is. all those radar installations are 30 some years old and now it looks like they're going to produce northern approaches surveillance system as either a supplement or a partial replacement for that system but almost 40 billion dollars for the canadian government investing on a project is

that's quite a commitment to uh to that region yes yeah norad modernization is a major topic in of itself and is obviously a key to continental defense and and the climate layer there is interesting in terms of you know just the ability for radar sites to be well positioned to not be undermined by things like erosion or permafrost thaw but but of course you know the that the whole purpose of it being that you know we need to be investing in a system that is able to detect the modern types of missiles that may come our way, and to not just detect them, but to track them and to, you know, protect the continent. So yeah, and I was glad to see that announcement from Canada. And I know there was also some language between Biden and Trudeau at their

meeting yesterday on that as well, for their commitment to modernization. You have another time stamp it one more time. I mean, we just ran through like six different developments that have happened in the last 24 hours. So Saturday, March 25th is when we're recording this. If there's 18 more changes between now and when this actually airs, it's not our fault. Just a lot of stuff that's going on up there. But I'm sorry that's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Marisol Maddox.

Marisol, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Besides submitting your application to go work in Montreal. That sounds like an amazing COE opportunity. Well, thank you so much for having me. Yeah. So I guess the next things I'm working on are one written product that has to do with basically suggestions for the way that the U.S. intelligence community can evolve to better be situated to deal with the reality of a changed Arctic. and in terms of, you know, enhancing collection capabilities and, you know, how we interact with

our allies and the types of expertise that we will need to be able to understand how the future is not well represented by the past. And then I'm also working on something related to the technical side of pan-Arctic methane monitoring now that we have a major data gap with not getting the data from the Russian Arctic. So that's what's on the list for me. And then I'm always happy to chat with people. People can find me on Twitter at Marisol underscore Maddox and on LinkedIn as well. So feel free to reach out. Well, thank you again for joining us. So listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. © BF-WATCH TV 2021

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