An online portal meant to help military commanders plan for the impacts of climate change disappeared from the Defense department's website sometime after Jan. 21, according to data from the Internet Archive.
The site — www.climate.mil — featured a public-facing interface as well as one accessible only by someone with a military I.D. card.
The Climate Resilience Portal was designed to "reduce complexity and inform DOD decisions," an archived version of the webpage says. "The Portal is a central, one-stop focal point for scientifically credible, authoritative, and actionable climate change information."
The I.D. card-accessible part of the website included a "geospatial tool supporting climate change exposure assessments for Department of Defense sites and installations both domestic and overseas," the archived page says.
The tool also featured detailed flooding inundation maps for military bases at risk of floods, the page says.
"In recent years, I think the Pentagon has really taken a step forward and been much more forward leaning in terms of addressing climate and climate adaptation as national security priority," said Katherine Yusko, a research analyst at the American Security Project.
Yusko, who specializes in climate security and the military, said Pentagon leaders should know they'll need to plan to operate under more extreme conditions.
"We need to make sure our military equipment is able to navigate these environments," Yusko said. "We need to make sure our forces are able to navigate these environments and we need to be able to anticipate where, when and what degrees of threat we need to effectively plan for."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's office did not respond to questions about the website, when it was taken offline or why.
Yusko said there are ways to address to issues that come with climate change while navigating the sensitive political environment.
"We can call it natural disasters," she said. "We can call it catastrophic events, extreme weather events — whatever we want to call it. The data points to an increase, in the frequency and severity of these events and those events have real implications for human lives. And real implications for U.S. national security."
Several government websites went dark Friday as agencies scrambled to comply with President Donald Trump's executive orders on diversity and recognition of trans people. It's not clear when the Pentagon's page went dark.
Other Pentagon climate change resources — including a PDF of its Climate Adaption Plan — remained online as of Feb. 3.
