The Department of Defense (DoD) recognizes that global changes in the environment, such as climate change, impact DoD operations and installations. In alignment with the National Defense Strategy (NDS), the DoD Directive 4715.21 Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience, and the Department’s 2019 Arctic Strategy, DoD seeks to understand, prepare, and respond to the impact of global environmental changes. DoD’s research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) activities as well as interagency and international collaboration through the USGCRP play a critical role in DoD’s efforts to address global environmental change. DoD manages and executes RDT&E activities across the Services that respond to specific national security requirements and may also be leveraged to address the strategic goals of the USGCRP. DoD’s global change RDT&E efforts focus on building awareness of the changing operational physical environment through observations and predictive models and enhancing operations in those changing environments via mitigation, adaptation, and resilience.

The Navy is exploring new platforms for sustained observational capability in the Arctic as well as developing global weather, ocean, and sea ice prediction models at the seasonal (months) timescale. The Navy and the Air Force collaborate with U.S. interagency partners on the National Earth System Prediction Capability, the next generation of predictive models for the entire Earth system. The Air Force leverages National and allied partners' seasonal and climate model projections to provide value-added products for DoD and the Intelligence Community. DoD is expanding and modifying an Army tool for installations to assess exposure to climate and weather impacts. The Army continues to focus on addressing Arctic mobility and infrastructure challenges. The Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), the Department’s joint environmental science and technology program, invests in research to enhance DoD’s overall resilience to environmental threats and climate change impacts. Finally, the Department more broadly sponsors basic research in a number of potentially relevant areas such as marine meteorology, physical oceanography, polar science and engineering, biogeochemical sciences, and terrestrial science and phenomenology.