Air Force Taps Peninsula Firm To Assess Future Sea Level Rise

SAN MATEO, CA — A San Mateo risk analytics firm announced Tuesday that it has been selected to conduct a study on behalf of the US Air Force to assess the future rise in sea levels.

Jupiter, which specializes in risk assessment related to climate change, will join BEM Systems, which is based in Chatham, New Jersey, in the study of the rise and flooding at Wake Island Airfield in the Micronesia Region of the Pacific Ocean.

The data will help the Air Force prepare for and mitigate anticipated consequences of severe weather events, Jupiter said in a statement.

“The science of quantifying risk from climate change has matured, and at facilities like Wake Island we can accurately anticipate and mitigate risks from future storms in great detail,” Jupiter CEO Rich Sorkin said in a statement.

“With the new Biden Administration, we expect that Jupiter’s work in the public sector will accelerate, and we look forward to a new era of government engagement.”

As part of the Wake Island project, Jupiter will develop a coupled hydrodynamic model to predict flooding from tropical storm surge and wave runup at Wake Island Airfield.

The model’s projections of the changing Wake Island floodplain over time will allow the US Air Force to plan ahead of potentially dangerous conditions arising from climate change on both current and future facilities, allowing for resilience measures or infrastructure changes to be enacted.

“Much of the disruption we anticipate from climate change will occur within a 50-year time horizon, with some effects already being felt in the Pacific,” Sorkin said.

“Just as the military is a driving force around the adoption of many of today’s technological advancements, we anticipate that the Air Force’s early adoption of climate analytics and resilience planning will be a model for other public- and private-sector institutions moving forward.”