Weatherwatch: pothole problem to deepen amid climate crisis

If you think the potholes in your local roads are bad now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Extreme weather is going to put our transport infrastructure under severe strain in future decades. A new study assesses the likely damage under different emissions scenarios.

Researchers used climate models to analyse the impact of eight different meteorological hazards on more than 18m km of rail and road infrastructure up to 2100. The results, published in Earth’s Future, show that extreme heat and permafrost thaw pose the most severe threat, closely followed by heavy rain during dry months. South and east Asia, west and central Europe, the Mediterranean and eastern North America are the most vulnerable regions of the world, partly because of the high density of road and rail in these areas. But the researchers also found that reducing greenhouse emissions and following a low-emissions pathway can reduce exposure to infrastructure hazards by more than 50%.

Most of our current road and rail infrastructure is not designed for the record-breaking weather of the future. Londoners had a taste of this during the heatwave of July 2022, when timber beams supporting railway caught fire, bringing trains to a halt. As well as reducing emissions, the researchers recommend that future transport infrastructure is fortified to cope with greater climate extremes.