Extreme heat buckled a stretch of highway near Washington, DC in early July. It shut down the road as drivers headed out for the July 4th weekend. A week before, two sections of a German highway burst open due to extreme heat. Two days before that, a freight train derailed in Sweden. The cause: extreme heat had expanded the tracks. Heat waves driven by climate change have become more intense around the world. And the extreme heat is causing damage to roads, railways, and other infrastructure. Governments are struggling to keep pace with the costs of the repairs. Mikhail Chester told NPR that our current roads were designed for milder temps. He's a professor at Arizona State University. Hotter temps, he says, are "exceeding the design thresholds of those infrastructures." A number of studies have shown that rising temps are making infrastructure more costly. A 2022 study by an international research team put a dollar amount on the cost of climate change to infrastructure in the US. The team wrote that the cost of repairs could be as much as $700 million per year for every 1 degree Celsius increase in average temps. Meanwhile, studies show that taking steps to build infrastructure with climate change in mind is far cheaper than paying for repairs. A 2024 Pew study found that doing so could cut costs by up to a third. That's compared with doing almost nothing. Chester told NPR the US’ approach to infrastructure does not do enough for a changing climate. "And that's going to require us to innovate,” he said. Reflect: How do you think we should adjust to a world that's changing faster than expected? Gif of asphalt from Giphy.
