Europe's railways have felt the impact acutely.
An EU report in April found that more than 70% of rail managers were seeing growing disruption from extreme weather. Between 2015 and 2024 weather-related interruptions amounted to the equivalent of one to three years of railway service across the region.
Heat can cause tracks to expand, and points, signals and power to fail. However, extreme weather triggered by high temperatures can be even more disruptive.
"The most critical issue for rail networks is not the heat itself, but the thunderstorms, strong winds and landslides that often follow heatwaves," said Oliviero Baccelli, a professor at Milan's Bocconi University.
"Italy has already experienced significant disruptions to its railway network, particularly on Alpine routes, as a result of climate-related events."
Northern European countries such as Britain face particular challenges because much of their rail infrastructure was designed for a narrower temperature range than networks in southern Europe.
John Lawrence, chair of the IET Railway Technical Network, said many rail components and systems were "in essence frozen in time".
He added it would be a huge cost to heat-proof entire networks, though operators were exploring more stable sleeper designs and technologies such as AI and drones to "speed up the amount of track that can be inspected and monitored".
Britain's Network Rail has pledged to invest £2.6 billion ($3.5 billion) between 2024 and 2029 to help its network withstand increasingly extreme weather.
Not all solutions are hugely expensive, however, with some operators using traditional methods to reflect heat. Stockholm's transport authority spent about 100,000 Swedish crowns ($10,300) painting sections of metro track white in May and June to reduce the risk of track buckling.
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