AI server farms heat up the neighborhood for miles around, paper finds

Datacenters create heat islands that raise surrounding temperatures by several degrees at distances up to 10 km (over 6 miles), which could have an impact on surrounding communities. The findings come from a team at the University of Cambridge, which examined the heat dissipation of large server farms, given the proliferation …

[LBJsPNS]

Oh good. Because burning fossil fuels hasn't heated up the climate enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

or perhaps this is further confirmation of the urban heat island effect, where temperature measurements that used to be in the middle of the countryside are now surrounded by towns or busier airports which make it appear to have heated up more than it actually has. This would mean that we should probably use satellite measurements instead of ground based, if we want something more accurate.

However that would mean climate change isn't anywhere near as scary as we're being led to believe.

Anon as I work for an energy company who are currently "all in" in Net Zero, so I'll keep it like that until the Overton Window shifts in a couple of years, and those targets will be quietly dropped.

[cyberdemon]

Didcot Weather

It's common around power stations to find localised higher temperature and humidity, due to the plant's cooling towers adding a lot more water vapour, which apart from the direct heat from the station, also absorbs sunlight.

I think it's pretty clear that the earth IS getting warmer and weather is becoming more violent - e.g. just look at sea ice and glacier loss - but how much of that is due to CO2, and how much is from other human-caused pollution (such as methane, CFCs, SF6, carbon black, and water vapour) or even natural changes in solar activity I am less convinced.

I do nevertheless believe we need to reduce energy consumption - the oil will run out eventually, and the wars we will have over the last few zillion barrels of it will be our undoing. And as we have seen in the middle east: War is a major polluter in itself, and even a small one in a far away land can wipe out any progress we might make with our Net Zero malarkey.

So we need clean, reliable power - nukes are a good candidate but are burdened by crippling regulation - the good news is that regulation is the one thing that governments CAN fix.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Didcot Weather

I agree the Earth is warming up. Just not convinced it's enough to worry too much about... for now. And hopefully we'll have power tech that can replace fossil fuels in the coming decades. And if not it's probably cheaper to put in mitigations rather than completely impoverish ourselves, as we seem to be doing in Europe right now.

More nuclear would be the obvious stop gap.

I'm not sure that calling CO2 "pollution" is a good idea. There are far worse pollutants that are actually directly harmful.

I'm also not convinced about sea ice loss. It does seem to be stubbornly not being lost at the rate which is of any concern. Although this depends on who is telling the actual truth. Is it those nasty climate denier web sites with scientists who are probably funded by Big Oil or those lovely climate alarmists who are probably funded by Big Green. ;-)

[cd]

Re: Didcot Weather

Yup, those hundreds of dead trees I pass walking in forests are just a liberal fantasy. Stupid trees are just trying to shame the oil industry, which doesn't have any shame.

Just stay indoors and listen to podcasts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: not convinced about sea ice loss

Hungry polar bears would like a word...

[vtcodger]

Re: Didcot Weather

Downvoted because while the assumption that the Earth overall is getting warmer is very likely correct, there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that weather is becoming more violent. Neither is there any particular reason to expect that to happen. In point of fact the scientific consensus is,and always has been, that the affects of planetary warming will mostly be felt in the high latitudes and mostly in the form of warmer Winter nights

And yes you're right that fossil fuels won't last forever, although the supply is probably underestimated. At least that's always been the case in the past. And yes the answer to that is presumably nuclear power although I don't think the issue of where the massive amounts of fissionables and/or fusionables are going to come from has been thought through.

But the idea that nuclear power plants don't need to be regulated as strictly as commercial aircraft are strikes me as being incredibly optimistic. Perhaps if guaranteed fail-safe designs like Pebble bed reactors become standard, humanity can safely allow bean-counters and sales geniuses to run nuclear plants without strict regulation. But I wouldn't underestimate the capability of those folks to generate catastrophy even where failure seems impossible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Didcot Weather

I think "fusionables" means Hydrogen, which I understand we have plenty of. Most of it's attached to water, but the electro chemical reaction to separate the Hydrogen uses WAY less power than the power from the nuclear reaction that you get out. At least that's how I understand it. If we can ever get that one to work. A big if.

Yeah, they do need to be regulated of course. Just not over regulated. I don't think anyone suggested regulating them less than commercial aircraft?

Apart from those couple of points, thumbs up.

[vtcodger]

Re: Didcot Weather

"I think funsionablew means hydrogen ,,, "

Yes, but what they don't mention except in three point type on page 36 of the spec is that the first generation fusion plants will probably use Deuterium-Tritium fuel. It's easier to get that to "burn" than plain old garden variety Hydrogen. Deuterium may not be a big problem although it's kind of scarce, Roughly 0.015% of Water molecules contain 1 deuterium atom in place of a normal Hydrogen molecule. Tritium on the other hand is really hard to come by. It's radioactive with a half life of about a decade. My impression is that there are no natural sources. I believe that the small amount currently being produced is sort of an unintentional byproduct of some fission reactor designs.

[martinusher]

Re: Didcot Weather

You may not experience much change in a place like Didcot (like most of the UK) but if you live somewhere that's more continent sized like the US you certainly notice something's changing. Its a gradual, inexorable, process. Obviously because of the political dimension there's a fair bit of controversy over this (much of it manufactured) but its worth bearing in mind that the likely effects were studied as long ago as the early 70s by a large oil company and our own Department of Defense designs new facilities with the likely effects in mind.

It goes without saying that where there's naked power to be had then ecology just gets forgotten in the mad rush to grab it. Its a sort of global scale FOMO that we really should discourage.

[drankinatty]

Re: Didcot Weather

There is no question we have had a global-average warmed to the threshold of 1.5 deg C. Even without the scientists and data, my 60 years of observation tells me the same thing. The 8mm footage of a couple of towheaded boys running around knee deep in snow in N. Texas in the 70's is all that remains of winter weather (aside from the rare snowmageddon event where your sentors leave for Cancun like clockwork).

Aside from the industry dribble from "Vlad" in the article, it is "simple physics". Energy is neither created or destroyed, it can only change form. Applied to datacenters, what isn't directly used to move electrons is given off as waste heat. It like the "away" in where plastic goes when "thrown away". It ends up somewhere. Heat is no different (though we can't ship it to the Southeast Asia or Africa "away")

When we are talking about projects on the order of hundreds of MegaWatts or GigaWatts that are at most 45-70% efficient, that's at least 30% of the power consumed being rejected as waste heat. If the coal fired or gas fed fossil fuels on the input doesn't contribute enough, the waste heat will.

[Filippo]

>or perhaps this is further confirmation of the urban heat island effect, where temperature measurements that used to be in the middle of the countryside are now surrounded by towns or busier airports which make it appear to have heated up more than it actually has.

I'm not sure I understand. What's the "it" in the last sentence? What does "heated up more than it actually has" mean?

You mean that the urban heat island effect is not a driver of climate change? Okay, I agree, but I've also almost never heard anyone claim that, certainly nobody who has any authority on the subject. When a correlation is claimed, the causal link is typically claimed to be the opposite (heat islands make heatwaves more dangerous, which seems a no-brainer to me).

Why would we want to exclude ground-based measurements? I live on the ground, it's where I sweat or shiver. Anything that changes ground temperature is very relevant to the general public.

Puzzling.

[Anonymous Coward]

"it" is the Earth. The Earth appears to have heated up more than The Earth actually has.

We seem to be using those increases in temperature a proxy for the whole planet. It's only 1 to 3 degrees so it's hardly going to make a difference to how much you sweat or freeze, however it does lead to headlines about "Record temperature increase" to make us all scared that it's getting hotta than evah. The satellite is still measuring the ground temperature where you actually _live_. Why exclude the ground based measurements? Because they have been corrupted by the Urban Heat Island effect and can't be extrapolated into a GMST.

[vtcodger]

Satellite temperature measurement

A nit -- satellites don't actually measure ground temperature. They measure lower troposphere temperature -- very roughly, the average temperature of the lowest few km of the local atmosphere. They can, and do, detect extremely warm spots -- wildfires, missile launches, but that's done with different satellites.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Satellite temperature measurement

Thanks. I learned a thing today.

[doublelayer]

The problem is that, when people compare temperatures from the past and the present from the same location, there are various reasons for the collected temperatures to have changed. If you had a temperature measurement station in some farmland in 1920 and kept it there all the way through to today, but today that is a suburb rather than a field surrounded by forest, then it would have increased for local reasons rather than for climatic ones. This is known, and data from these stations is decreased by an amount calculated based on factors believed to correlate closely with those local changes. Of course, with any adjustment of data like this, it has lots of room for people to argue it was done wrong, either because they think it actually was done wrong or because they don't like the conclusions and want to throw doubt on the research.

[DS999]

There are also temperature stations which used to be rural and still are rural, so there is no reason to expect they should be affected. When they check temperatures just in that restricted set they show a similar amount of warming to the overall "adjusted" set, which is a good indication that the adjustments being performed are (on the whole) reasonable.

[doublelayer]

Correct. I was trying to explain what this argument about heat islands was about. Of course, those who think all people studying climate have colluded or are deluded probably have explanations for always-rural stations too, but I am not one of them so I'll let the next one try to make them. Sadly, so many stations with the longest history of reliable measurements are now near something kind of urban so many studies of climate can't just ignore them without losing detail that provides a lot more information.

[Anonymous Coward]

"all people studying climate have colluded"

I don't believe there is any need for collusion, however it's quite possible that those people have a bias towards looking for greater evidence for warming because this is what leads to grant money. If governments and populations are more scared of catastrophe they will act to do something about it. There's never enough money, and further study is pretty much always needed. Perhaps I'm too sceptical?

When you read that some of these so-called "rural" stations don't actually exist..

https://dailysceptic.org/2026/04/01/the-scandal-of-the-scottish-met-office-station-still-providing-temperature-figures-six-decades-after-it-closed/

And haven't existed for 60 years, it does kind of make you wonder if someone is trying to make the data fit their ideology. Like "Don't look up! " we're all going to die, for God's sake why won't anyone listen?

I'm also sceptical about what Chris Morrison has to say because obviously he's making money from promoting an opposing narrative, although I very much doubt he's raking it in. Do you think he's sponsored by Big Oil?

[DS999]

have a bias towards looking for greater evidence for warming because this is what leads to grant money

Who has more money to give scientists who are willing to tilt their findings based on who is paying them? The renewable energy industry or the fossil fuel industry? If what you say was happening it would be going in the OTHER direction and climate scientists would be underselling the amount of warming they find to please the oil industry!

[vtcodger]

Temperature measurements

Yes, even some "rural" stations now have substantial paved areas near the sensors where there used to be plants. And some of sites have other problems -- like changing sensor types and locations while still reporting under the same name. There are even cases where the sensor turns out upon close examination to be located in the exhaust stream of air conditioners or other heat sources. And then there's the problem of large areas of the Earth surface -- especially in the mostly ocean Southern Hemisphere -- having little or no regular temperature reporting.

On the other hand, the temperature trends computed from satellite measurements track pretty closely to those computed from surface measurements (about 0.14C per decade).* Maybe the surface measurements aren't all that bad.

Personally, I'm inclined to trust the satellites which have (near) global coverage using the same (complex) instrumentation and not worry much about the thermometers at East Hogheaven don't seem consistent with those down the road at Dismalton Station.

* Although the UAH satellite temperature averages track the surface averages pretty closely** -- both go up and down at the same time -- the satellite values show greater swings. That's attributed -- maybe correctly -- to increased evaporation during warm spells and decreased evaporation in cooler periods. Evaporation magically transfers "heat" from the surface to the troposphere where it reappears when the water vapor condenses or freezes.

** At least for Sea Surface temperatures

[Jedit]

At last, a positive use for AI?

You can use the heat from the data centres to conceal your grow op.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: At last, a positive use for AI?

and if you grow some of the really strong Cali strains, you too can hallucinate like AI.

[APro]

Heat pumps?

I often wondered about ground sourced heat pumps dumping and extracting heat to the ground within the suburban setting and changing the local climate. Never really considered the "what if" of doing the same with a data centre, and especially an AI/HPC datacentre built to run high loads as much as 90% of the time. Are any of these DCs dumping heat into the ground? If not, then that's one hell of a heat plume to change a delta of 9C in the ground from the air.

Over the last 20 years we've noticed a massive change (to which I mean decrease) in animal populations - mainly birds, but also insects and small mammals such as hedgehogs. The increase in sound and light pollution due to the expansion of the town (increased traffic noise and change to white LED street lights as a notable jump) has been a major factor. Now with a large DC supposedly being built nearby soon, and within 3 miles of us I guess the drop in animal numbers will only increase with the higher ambient temperatures.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Heat pumps?

Unless the AI data centre replaces a bunch of suburban lawns sprayed with pesticides and intensive single crop farms sprayed with pesticides

[DS999]

Re: Heat pumps?

None of them are dumping heat into the ground - a datacenter has WAY too much heat for that to work unless you had an absolutely insane number of loops/wells which would have to be spread over a far larger area than the data center's footprint. Maybe if it was surrounded by farmland, but it just isn't gonna be cost effective which is why they use a lot of water to evaporate away the heat. The only time a datacenter might use geothermal if it they can do loops into a large body of water. Like a good sized lake multiple square miles in size or more, and unless it a a lot bigger than that one that isn't environmentally sensitive (i.e. maybe already ruined by industrial use in the past so there isn't much in it that warmer water will kill)

Geothermal works best on smaller scales like homes or schools which which don't have super concentrated cooling loads like a datacenter. And, in most climates, have some need for heating as well as cooling. If you have a situation where it is only heating or only cooling you need more loops/wells to offset that "one way" transaction - the worse the local subsoil type / moisture level is at moving heat the more loops you need.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Heat pumps?

"Are any of these DCs dumping heat into the ground? "

If you look at the underground requirements for a ground source heat pump just for a single residence, what would be required for a small data center would be massive. If companies were forced into that, they might look for locations where land is very cheap and easy to trench. Using water and cooling towers is much more compact and faster to set up.

[Geoff Campbell]

Ho ho

I hate this day.

GJC

[IGotOut]

Re: Ho ho

The source article was published 27th March.

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: Ho ho

Even more reason to hate the ridiculous April Fools Day nonsense. It undermines real but incredible claims such as this apparently is.

GJC

[IGotOut]

Repeat after me.

THEY DO NOT CARE.

[robinsonb5]

I joked a few days ago that maybe we should ban active cooling in datacentres - so I have some data to back up the idea!

[Donn Bly]

Heat Island?

I'll accept the premise that data centers create a localized heat island. After all, everything that man does on an industrial scale generates heat in some form. Whether the vast amount of BTU's from a mill with blast furnaces producing steel, or 10's of thousands of small air conditioners in a city pumping heat into the outside environment to cool the inside, we generate a LOT of heat. But I also have concerns about their testing methodology if they recorded a 9°C difference to the surrounding land, as that sounds so excessive to be sensationalized. The cynic in me also wonders how many CPU cycles in a data center they used to create a model showing that data centers generate heat, and if any comparison was made to other forms of industry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Heat Island?

Yeah, from the last 2 paragraphs of TFA, I think it's the land modification from forest/pasture to paved datacenter that seems to be at issue here. Their effects would likely be less if they had green roofs and a well-developed public transit system (electric) to reduce the need for parking ...

[Bebu sa Ware]

Updraught?

Just grabbing at random an Indiana AWS campus on 64 ha. burning 2.2GW I would wonder how to what extent convection affects the local atmosphere.

That is 2.2x10⁹ J / 0.64x10⁶ m² every second. The average adult generates 80-100W of heat although from appearance many are clearly only 15W incandescents.

Only using convective heat transfer into dry ambient air would be a challenge at this scale I imagine. I can see why water supplies are at grave risk from these brigands as the latent heat of vaporisation of water is extremely high ~2.2MJ/kg (~101kPa, bp 100°C) Vaporising 1.0t of water per second could handle 2.2GW, I think.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

And that is a surprise?

The heat generated is similar to very large wildfires... No surprise here.