This summer’s painful raft of flight delays and cancellations is just a glimpse of the future of air travel — thanks to climate change.

The already-busy travel season has seen headlines about runways in the United Kingdom “melting” in the heat and an extreme downpour in Las Vegas that delayed flights as wind gusts reached 60 miles per hour, practically hurricane-force winds.

These and other extreme climate events will only get worse, experts say — and without significant and costly upgrades to airports and airplanes, delays and cancellations will mount, too, forced by flooding, record-breaking heat, wildfires, freak storms, increased turbulence and more.

“We’re not ready,” said Alice Hill, an Obama administration veteran who is now a senior fellow for climate change policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Virtually none of the infrastructure that we have today has been built to the conditions that we are currently seeing, much less those in the future.”

According to a 2020 McKinsey study, if aircraft and runways aren’t improved to handle the coming changes, by 2050, up to 185,000 passengers per year could be affected by climate delays — about 23 times what we see today.

Climate models are projecting even more extreme weather in the years ahead, which “of course causes huge disruptions, delays — all sorts of things,” said Elizabeth Austin, CEO and founder of WeatherExtreme and also chief meteorologist for Airbus’ Perlan Mission II project, an experimental high-altitude glider that, in part, gathers atmospheric data from Earth’s edge.

“It’s not just winter storms and snowfall, but it’s also heat and convective activity — thunderstorms and things like that — that is probably the most disruptive [to air travel] just because it moves so quickly and it can build up,” she said in an interview.

Flooding also a threat

And though large parts of the globe have seen record heat waves this summer, the dangers posed to aviation and its outsized impact on commerce don’t end with temperatures: Christopher Oswald, senior vice president of safety and regulatory affairs at Airports Council International-North America, said Hurricanes Katrina in 2005 and Sandy in 2012 with their extensive flooding were wake-up calls for airports.

Even compared with excessive heat, “flooding really is probably a bigger, longer-lived risk, as is storm surge, and with sea level rise for coastal airports that poses a pretty significant challenge,” Oswald said.

A climate risk management study last year identified nearly 270 airports worldwide, including about 50 in North America — that includes busy Newark Liberty International Airport and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport –that are at risk for delays and equipment damage caused by rising sea level and salt water spillover. That number could nearly double by 2,100, the study said.

Regions not used to freezing temperatures are also seeing snap winter storms that dump snow and ice on runways never meant to handle them. Airports also need assurances from state and local governments that the electric grid won’t fail during extreme weather. Earlier this year, for instance, snow, sleet and ice knocked out power and forced operations to stop at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Ground equipment and related infrastructure at airports are vulnerable to extreme heat, too, said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University.

Last year, temperatures at Portland International Airport reached 116 degrees — a new record. And last month, Oregon saw seven consecutive days above 95 degrees, also a record.

Earlier this year, snow, sleet and ice knocked out power and forced operations to stop at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.