To build resilience, airports must identify the potential climate risks they face and take actions to minimize the impacts.

 



A climate resilient airport is one that has taken steps to prepare for the challenges that climate change and severe weather bring. Airport planning is conducted for many reasons, and they increasingly include consideration of the risks and impacts associated with climate changes and plans for future climate conditions. 

The ninth UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 9), ‘Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusiveand sustainable industrialization and foster innovation’, measures the progress made in developing, maintaining, and upgrading resilient infrastructure, including that of airports. Airports face numerous climate challenges which may impact their operations, infrastructure, and business continuity. This paper provides a high-level overview of the issues climate change may bring for airports, as well as some strategies on how to anticipate and prepare for contingencies. This paper is not intended to capture every single aspect regarding climate change and aviation, but will instead stay focused on airport resilience. Considering relevant work on adaptation currently underway by ICAO and international organizations such as Airports Council International (ACI), additional references may be added to the paper at a later stage.

Aviation Climate Impacts

The ICAO Airport Planning Manual, Part II, and Climate Change Synthesis documents identified nine primary climate impacts on Aviation, which may include, but are not limited to: 

Sea level rise: elevated flood risk; seawater damage or inundation of airport infrastructure; risk of permanent inundation in some locations; rising ground water tables damaging infrastructure; risk of inundation of ground transport links; greater risk of storm surge inundation due to sea level rise. 
Storm surge: damage to airport infrastructure and airport buildings; disruption of operations or temporary airport closure; reduced airport accessibility for ground and air transport; increases in contamination risk.6 
Increased intensity of storms: damage to airport infrastructure and airport buildings; accelerated ageing of the airport facilities and infrastructure, such as runways; destruction
of or damage to mobile or fragile equipment; increased flight delays and cancellations; temporary airport closure. 
Changes in average and extreme temperatures: exceedance of design standards leading to heat damage on airport surfaces; take-off weight restrictions, possibly requiring longer runways or schedule changes; changes in heating and cooling requirements increasing energy consumption and associated environmental and financial costs; overheating of equipment or degradation of performance; impact on the amount, location and temporal distribution of traffic demand; permafrost thawing may lead to ground instability causing damage both to aircraft movement areas (holes and buckling), and to infrastructure integrity and stability; impact on fuel handling and storage, due to maximum temperature restrictions. 
Changing precipitation (intensity and type): abnormal precipitation quantities or location; need for increased airport surface drainage capacity (runway, taxiway, ramp and apron); risk of flash flooding or inundation of infrastructure; potential risks to ground transport links; increase of existing, or emergence of new, drought regions, leading to restricted access to water supply; impacts on operations due to increasing precipitation.
  Changing icing conditions: increased use of pavement deicers; reduced airport capacity; increased use of aircraft de-icing and anti-icing.
  Changing wind: increased risk to aircraft operations due to high and varying winds conditions; changes to prevailing wind direction; potential risk of ground equipment being lifted and disrupting aircraft movements on ground; limitations to aircraft loading and unloading due to high winds; in extreme high wind conditions, reduced airport capacity due to air traffic control tower closures. 
Desertification: increased risk of soil erosion around runways, taxiways, and aprons; water shortages; disruptive sand storms; risk of encroachment of sand dunes on airport facilities; effects of sand on aircraft operations; effects of sand damage on airframes and engines. 
Changes in biodiversity (wildlife and ecosystems): changes in wildlife migration patterns; changes to the local biodiversity; increase in wildlife hazard. These climate factors will impact airport infrastructure and operations, and the impacts to one airport may be extended to others due to the interdependencies of aviation networks. 

To build resilience, airports must identify the potential climate risks they face and take actions to minimize the impacts. Airport operators may also wish to consider how the effects of climate impacts could propagate throughthe local, national and wider aviation networks. 




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