Impact of climate change on airport safety and operations

Year
2025
Primary Supervisor
Mark Maslin <m.maslin@ucl.ac.uk>
Institution
University College London (Department of Geography)
Academic Supervisors
Chris Brierley <c.brierley@ucl.ac.uk> (University College London, Department of Geography), Iain Hanson
Project Partners
Sidara (Sidara)

Background

Using advanced data analysis to assess future risk to major global airports. The impacts of geohazards on aviation are well know from the Icelandic volcanic eruption of 2010 to the Japanese tsunami in 2011. The impacts of climate change less well know but are getting worse. In 2024, Dubai Airport was flooded by extreme rainfall, disrupting flights for days, highlighting that global network airports are extremely vulnerable to extreme weather events. This project will study the 50 most important global airports (location and vulnerabilities) and assess the risk of climate change impacts (floods, storms, wildfires, heat waves and sea level rise) and compare and contrast with the associated geohazards (earthquakes, tsunami, volcanic eruption, land slides, avalanches).

PhD opportunity

Aviation is set to be a $trillion industry by 2030. But it is extremely vulnerable to climate change. The challenges of this airport include: assessing extreme weather/sea level vulnerability of each of the selected airport by down-scaling satellite topographic data and re-analysing weather observations. Machine-learning downscaling of climate projections will be required to compare with detail airport observational data and records of past disruptive extreme weather events. An assessment of climate uncertainty will be required to contextualise the potential future impacts. A comparison with geohazards will be made for each airport. The second stage of the project will examine how these risk profiles for each major airport can be used to create effective decision-making support tool for airports and airlines.

Other information

Applicant profile: Students with a strong background in mathematics or modelling.

  • https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters/climate-change-is-disrupting-air-travel-2023
  • https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S136192092100105X
  • https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/publications/economic-reports/weather-related-operational-disruptions-are-rising/