We already know about AI’s negative impacts on global emissions. Power-hungry data centers are keeping fossil fuel power plants running beyond their expected lifespans. Additionally, corporate emissions targets have suffered numerous setbacks due to data center scaling. A new study suggests it’s not just AI-driven emissions that contribute to global warming. The data centers themselves are literally hot, and that heat is impacting the surrounding areas, creating “heat islands.” The study states:
“Our study shows a non negligible and rather remarkable impact of the AI data centres on their local regions, which is consistent across the data centres worldwide and extends for several kilometers around the AI hyperscalers. The consistency, scale and extent of these effects lead [us] to think that the creation of local climate zones induced by data centres – that we call the data heat island effect – is real and significant, especially in the context of global warming and climate transformation.
Consequently, the data heat island effect could affect the welfare, healthcare, energy, and demographic systems. Since the trends of data centre energy consumption are expected to show a steep growth in the foreseeable future, the data heat island effect could solidly become an additional factor for environmental and industrial sustainability in the changing climate, hence having a robust impact on communities at local, regional, and international level, thus demanding to be studied in complex multi-hazard systems.”
The heat island phenomenon is a well-known health hazard and is often associated with the impacts of environmental injustice. The Biden administration took measures to alleviate these impacts in the Inflation Reduction Act. While the study found that, on average, land surface temperatures increased by two degrees in areas surrounding data centers, some areas increased by as many as nine degrees.
The study is currently in pre-publication and has yet to be peer reviewed. However, if rising local temperatures can be reliably tied to data center operations, that could present a supply chain risk for companies relying on AI. AI hyperscalers are going to find fewer communities willing to share their resources with data centers as the impacts on local areas become more well-known.
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