Data centers are so hot, their ‘heat island’ effect is raising temperatures up to 6 miles away and impacting 343 million people worldwide, study finds

The AI race heating up has taken on a more literal meaning.

AI infrastructure is significantly warming the areas around them, creating a “data heat island effect” with the potential to impact hundreds of millions of people living nearby, a new working paper found.

Using a data set of land surface temperatures produced by NASA, a research team led by the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge found from 2004 to 2024, the surrounding areas of more than 6,000 data centers worldwide saw an average increased land temperature of about 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. In certain cases, nearby temperatures increased 9 degrees Celsius, or 16.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers calculated these heat islands could be felt about 6.2 miles away from facilities, impacting up to 343 million people globally. 

“The data heat island effect could have a remarkable influence on communities and regional welfare in the future,” the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, said.

Data centers, which store and process immense amounts of data to train AI, have become the foundation of AI-related spending, with capital expenditures for the facilities predicted to reach $760 billion in 2026, according to BloombergNEF estimates, up from $450 billion last year. Hyperscalers like Alphabet have doubled their spending on data centers this year, with Google’s parent company alone planning to invest $185 billion into AI infrastructure. The........

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