Impact of Climate Change on Aeronautics and Aviation

The history of aeronautics and the development of commercial aircraft is extremely related to climate facts. Aircraft structures are designed on the basis damage tolerance criteria and the reference loadings are a few gust-loading spectral density data, the most famous was given by Theodore von Kármán. The dramatic climate change observed in the last decades introduce many issues in aeronautics and aviation. The appearance of unexpected loads demands heavier structures and systems, that is existing aircraft could be not able to contrast loading related to new gust spectra (airframe icing, wind shear phenomena, sand, and dust storms, jet stream changes, clear air turbulence etc). A lot of effort and investment in new technologies are needed to make aircraft greener to contribute to C02 reintroduces including both physical risks such as flight delays or airport closures and related costs, and contractual, regulatory, or legal compliance risks. A multi-disciplinary research effort by scientists, meteorologists, climatologists, and engineers, is needed to understand better the impacts of the changing climate on the entire aviation system, including aircraft and infrastructure. Thereafter, dedicated guidance material by ICAO could target climate adaptation correlated issues, based on models of best practice. Such guidance material would aim to support the risk management activities of all stakeholders, including operators and pilots, airport managers, aircraft manufacturers, governments, and regulators. In this scenario the role of space infrastructure becomes crucial. These can provide and collect the necessary data, some of these in real-time, to be used to design the above-dedicated guidance materials by referring to AI systems. Efforts should be made to put in low orbit the necessary payload/constellations to improve existing data on air traffic and climate monitoring along the aircraft routes