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Building aviation climate resilience by leveraging EUROCONTROL FlyingGreen's ClimAdapt

7 July 2025

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The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events present a growing challenge for aviation stakeholders. On EUROCONTROL's sustainability services platform FlyingGreen the ClimAdapt pillar provides support to identifying climate-change related risks and effective adaptation actions, helping the industry build long-term climate resilience. At ANA Airports of Portugal, which manages 10 airports in mainland Portugal, the Azores and in Madeira, experts know the challenges extreme weather conditions can bring to air traffic operations and are actively working on climate change impact assessments for their airports.

Paula's department is currently developing adaptation studies for ANA's airports and planning to use EUROCONTROL's “Repository of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation” as a guideline to ensure that no impact or measure is forgotten.

“From the very beginning, I realised that FlyingGreen could be of enormous relevance to ANA's climate change strategy, to define its path to carbon neutrality and to increase the resilience of its infrastructure. And I was not wrong. ClimAdapt, for example, will be very useful to support airports (and other aviation agents) in understanding the main risks to which they may be exposed, how to carry out their risk analysis and what measures to take into consideration.”

Paula Lucas Environment and Sustainability Department ANA Airports of Portugal

ANA airports is one of various aviation stakeholders that work on evaluating climate-related risks and implementing adaptation strategies using ClimAdapt tools. The services available on FlyingGreen support to:

Understand the impacts of climate change on aviation: Airports, airlines, and air navigation service providers use ClimAdapt to identify potential impacts of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves affecting operational performance, storms delaying flights, or flooding damaging infrastructure.
Identify effective adaptation measures: The platform supports stakeholders in pinpointing vulnerabilities and explores targeted adaptation actions to enhance operational and infrastructure resilience.

An airport wants to determine whether a comprehensive climate change risk assessment is necessary.
An ANSP seeks to quantify the potential financial impact of increasing storm frequency on their operations.
An aviation organisation needs guidance on conducting a risk assessment and developing a climate adaptation plan.

The latest enhancements in ClimAdapt further strengthen its capabilities, making it an essential tool for aviation stakeholders looking to integrate climate resilience into their decision-making:

Economic assessment tool: A new financial planning feature that allows stakeholders to analyse the economic implications of climate change impacts. Users can assess the likelihood of climate-related disruptions and estimate potential financial losses across key operational areas.
Repository of guidance on climate change impacts, climate risk assessment and adaptation measures: A comprehensive knowledge base offering aviation stakeholders' access to critical information on climate effects, risks assessment, and best practices for adaptation solutions by stakeholder group, climate effect, and risk category. This repository helps users identify the most relevant adaptation strategies tailored to their specific challenges.
Adaptation planning checklists: A structured framework to support national authorities, airports, air navigation service providers, and airlines in performing climate risk evaluations and developing adaptation plans for their aviation sectors or organisations. The checklist provides a step-by-step overview of the main phases in conducting climate risk assessments and developing tailored adaptation plans.

ClimAdapt’s roadmap focuses on expanding its risk assessment tools and creating a centralised knowledge hub for aviation climate adaptation.