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 1 day 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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[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Putting on my ME hat. Power systems are designed to extract the most amount of energy of their fuel sources. This leads for waste heat to not be significantly above ambient temperatures as they have extracted about as much as they can from it.

I assume now many high end servers are now water cooled, so that probably improves their cooling performance of their system, vs the older ways of aisle cooling and having hot and cold sides of the rack.

But unlike power stations, I don’t think the data centers have incentives or the ability to extract much useful work from their waste heat, so I’m sure they are dumping it as fast as they can plus the waste heat from all the secondary systems, cooling, water pumps, etc. are just compounding the local air temps.