Assessing Climate Change Vulnerability at Airports: A Primer (2024)
Chapter: Appendix C: Climate Data Resources
Appendix C. Climate Data Resources
Several resources are available to help you understand your airport’s exposure to future climate hazards, as detailed below:
Local Sources of Projections
Your state may have localized projections available. Airports can reach out to local climatologists to assess what resources are available. Many airports may find that their county or metropolitan region has completed a detailed climate vulnerability assessment, including an exposure assessment. It is often preferable to use existing climate information developed locally so that entities within a region are using the same datasets.
There are many local resources available for climate projections. Three examples of robust data sites include:
- The Cornell intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves, which has information on rainfall projections in New York.
- The Caltrans Division of Environmental Analysis Geographic Information Systems library has compiled data on environmental spatial information in California to assist with spatial analyses and to provide information regarding resources that are located within the boundaries of a planned project.
- The Southeast Florida Regionally Unified Sea Level Rise Projection includes sea level rise projections for the southeastern part of the state through 2120 and guidance on how to select appropriate scenarios.
If locally produced information is not available, please refer to the resources below.
Information on General Climate Trends
- The National Climate Assessment includes region-level information on projections of climate stressors.
Sources of Sea Level Rise Information
- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Sea Level Rise Portal includes both of the main sea level rise projection datasets, the Interagency Sea Level Rise Scenario Tool and the IPCC AR6 Sea Level Rise Projection Tool, along with supporting information.
Sources of Temperature and Precipitation
- EPA has information on national projections of climate hazards, and these can be further refined using the Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool Webmap.
- The U.S. DOT CMIP Climate Data Processing Tool processes readily available downscaled climate projections at the local level using the downscaled Climate and Hydrology Projections (DCHP) database.
- The Climate Mapper Tool includes information on an expanded set of climate variables, such as maximum temperatures and precipitation anomalies. The tool provides interactive, customizable graphs and maps of observed and projected climate, hydrology, agriculture, fire, and drought hazards.
- The U.S. Geological Survey National Climate Change Viewer includes historical and future climate projections from a variety of models. This tool also includes visualizations of the water balance for any state and county, such as snow water equivalent, runoff, soil water storage, and evaporative deficit.
- The Argonne National Laboratory Climate Risk & Resilience Portal has information on simulated future climate conditions at mid- and late-century for a range of climate hazards, including temperature maximums, total precipitation, wind speed averages, fire weather index, and heat index.
To determine which resource to use, airports should assess the format of the data, the specific region, and the projection time period of each tool and whether it aligns with their needs. For example, if they need projections for fire danger across the country, the Climate Mapper Tool has projections of 100-hour fuel moisture through late century available as gridded raster data.
