As climate change accelerates, the French Space Agency (CNES) has commissioned AXA Climate to conduct a forward-looking study assessing how climate hazards that could affect its critical infrastructure and space operations are expected to evolve, including satellite launches and satellite monitoring from ground stations.
Covering ten sites across mainland France and French Guiana, the study examines projected climate conditions for 2040, 2050 and 2070 to inform CNES’s climate adaptation decisions.
Safeguarding the continuity of space missions in a changing climate
As a major player in Earth observation and climate change monitoring, CNES has long used space technologies to advance knowledge and support the management of environmental risks. Through this study, CNES is applying the same forward-looking approach to its own sites and operations.
Space infrastructure relies on highly interconnected equipment, technical networks and functions, whose availability is essential to the continuity of CNES’s missions. Changes in temperature, precipitation, wind and water availability can affect how this infrastructure operates, the conditions in which activities are carried out, and the people working on these sites.
A forward-looking analysis of climate risks across ten strategic sites
AXA Climate brought together a multidisciplinary team of climate, data and risk management specialists. The study examines both long-term climate trends and extreme events that could affect the sites, including dry and humid heat, heavy precipitation, flooding, drought, wildfires, strong winds, landslides, lightning, coastal erosion and water stress.
The work analysed climate trajectories for ten strategic sites for 2040, 2050 and 2070, using 48 indicators covering 15 climate hazards.
The analysis draws on several climate scenarios and models developed as part of the work of the IPCC, as well as France’s reference warming trajectory for adaptation to climate change, known as the TRACC. Global projections were translated to the local level to assess the intensity, frequency, duration and probability of occurrence of each hazard. Indicators were also selected according to CNES’s operational priorities and aligned with the Ariane 6 framework.
From climate projections to operational decisions
The study examined hazards that could occur simultaneously and interact at the same site. Rising temperatures, for example, may coincide with increased water stress, conditions that favour wildfires or greater demand on cooling systems. This combined analysis helped identify critical dependencies and situations in which several risk factors could affect the same activity simultaneously.
The work also led to a reassessment of certain design, maintenance and operational assumptions based on past climate conditions. It helped characterise the exposure of each site over different time horizons and identify areas requiring priority attention.
The findings will provide CNES with a scientific basis for further analysing the vulnerability of its assets, prioritising risks and investments, updating business continuity plans, and defining technical and organisational adaptation measures.
“CNES plays a central role in observing climate change from space. It is equally essential that we anticipate its impacts on our own infrastructure and on the continuity of our missions. This study gives us a consistent, locally specific view of the hazards to which our sites could be exposed. It represents an essential step towards integrating future climate conditions into our decisions, standards and resilience plans,” says Professor Laurence Monnoyer-Smith, Director of the Sustainable Development Delegation at the French Space Agency (CNES).
“Our expertise goes beyond climate projections. It consists in translating changes in the climate into tangible consequences for activities, infrastructure and operations. By analysing climate hazards at the level of each site, we enable CNES’s local teams to identify priorities, anticipate risks to their activities and focus adaptation measures on solutions that are relevant, effective and directly actionable,” adds Rayann Al Jallad, Associate Consultant in Climate Adaptation at AXA Climate.
