this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Data centers are creating ‘heat islands’ and warming the land around them by up to 16 degrees | CNN (www.cnn.com)
submitted 15 hours ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The vast data centers that power artificial intelligence are so energy hungry that they’re heating up their surroundings, according to new research. It’s an alarming finding given the number of data centers is predicted to explode over the next few years.

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[–] DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world 11 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Strikingly, 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, affecting more than 340 million people.

Huh?

[–] BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

Yeah. Press X to doubt on this

[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Air and water move, especially when heated.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

But un a radius of 6 mi? That sounds a bit high.
More close to a city with lots of concrete to store the heat.

[–] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Large data centers can consume over 100 MW of power. Almost ALL the energy a computer consumes is turned into heat, like well over 90%. A home AC unit pulls a little under 1 kW, and I think heating is about the same so that's equivalent to heating over 100,000 homes, except those homes will eventually get warm and stop running the heat. The data center churns all day, every day. Given that, it may be equivalent to all the heat put out in more like 250,000 homes. Data centers produce an ABSURD amount of heat.

Edit: and keep in mind, that's HOMES, not people. Average people per household in the US is 2.5, so that's heating for over 600,000 people.