  The outpouring of radiation during an X-ray burst can affect the properties
of accretion discs around neutron stars: the corona can cool and collapse, the
inner regions can be bled away due to enhanced accretion, and the additional
heating will lead to changes in the disc height. In this paper, we investigate
whether radiation from bursts can cause the disc to distort through a warping
instability. Working in the limit of isotropic viscosity and linear growth, we
find that bursts are more likely to drive disc warps when they have larger
luminosities and longer durations. Therefore, warps will be most probable
during intermediate duration bursts (IMDBs) and superbursts with evidence for
photospheric radius expansion. Further, the development of warps depends on the
disc viscosity with larger values of $\alpha$ increasing the likelihood of warp
growth. We perform time-dependent evolution calculations of the development of
warps during Type I bursts and IMDBs. Depending on the initial warp prior to
the burst, we find the burst produces warps at $r$ <~ 50 $r_g$ that rapidly
grow and decay on second-long timescales, or ones that grow more slowly and
cover a large fraction of the disc. The pulsations of warp at small radii
appear to have the properties needed to explain the achromatic fluctuations
that have been observed during the tails of some IMDBs. The large scale, slowly
growing warps could account for the large reflection strengths and absorbing
column densities inferred late in the 4U 1820-30 and 4U 1636-53 superbursts.
