According to new research, the giant data centers that power AI are creating “heat islands,” warming the land around them by up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit, and making life hotter for more than 340 million people.
There are still big gaps in our understanding of the impacts of data centers, even as they boom in number, said Andrea Marinoni, associate professor with the Earth Observation group at the University of Cambridge, and an author of the study.
Marinoni and his colleagues decided to dig into one under-researched impact: the heat they release through their energy-intensive processes, including computation and powering cooling systems.
To do this, they looked at temperature data over the last 20 years from remote sensors and mapped it against the locations of AI “hyperscalers” — vast data centers that house thousands of servers and can stretch over a million square feet, which have mostly been built within the last decade.
They found surface temperatures increased by an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit after a data center started operations. In extreme cases, nearby temperatures increase by up to 16.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
But the impacts weren’t limited to a data center’s immediate surroundings; temperature increases affected areas up to 6.2 miles away, the research found, ultimately affecting more than 340 million people.
