What is the DoD Climate Assessment Tool?
A CAC-enabled, web-based collection of scientific climate data to support research, analysis, and decision making about exposure to historical extreme weather and reasonably foreseeable climate effects.
What is the purpose of the Climate Tool?
Enables Military Departments and their installation personnel to deliver consistent exposure assessments and identify regions or installations for additional climate-related studies.
How will the tool support analysis and decision making?
The tool uses data from past extreme weather events (e.g., hurricanes, tornado tracks) and the effects of future changes in sea levels, riverine flooding, drought, heat, land degradation, energy demand, and wildfires to produce hazard indicators.
The data supports a screening-level assessment of installation vulnerability expressed as a combination of exposure (designated by the tool) and sensitivity. This high-level assessment is useful for long-term planning and informed decision making. In the report accompanying the tool, an example installation illustrates the concept of sensitivity with different types of military assets (e.g., airfields, piers, training and testing areas).
Climate change has been identified by the DoD as a critical national security threat and a threat multiplier. DCAT is the Department’s actionable climate assessment tool leveraging best available, authoritative data and methods. Assessing long-term exposure through tools like DCAT is essential to account for climate risks and vulnerabilities to DoD sites worldwide.
DCAT supports climate-informed decision making about prioritization and resources for climate adaptation and resilience (Climate Adaptation Plan LOE 1) to achieve the CAP End State: Ensure the DoD can operate under changing climate conditions, preserving operational capability and enhancing the natural and man-made systems essential to the Department’s success.
It provides a screening-level analysis and enables Military Departments and installation staff to deliver consistent climate exposure assessments, compare exposure across locations and prioritize further investments where additional climate-related studies might be needed to determine sensitivity and adaptive capacity.
DCAT calculates installation’s future climate exposure to 8 hazards: coastal flooding, riverine flooding, heat, drought, energy demand, land degradation, wildfire, and historical extreme weather events.
The tool assesses climate hazard exposure for two scenarios—lower future warming and higher future warming—and two future epochs: 2035–2064 (reported at 2050) and 2070–2099 (reported at 2085).
It includes customizable reports that can be used to prioritize installations for further, more detailed study of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity (ESAC); support effective and efficient planning; and identify climate resilience measures.
Using DoD credential authentication, the CONUS-Alaska-Hawaii DCAT can be found here. Overseas analyses in the DCAT International tool can be found here.
An in-depth report providing an unclassified overview of the data and trends represented within the DCAT is available here: DoD installation Exposure to Climate Change at Home and Abroad
