The data heat island effect: quantifying the impact of AI data centers in a warming world
The strong and continuous increase of AI-based services leads to the steady proliferation of AI data centres worldwide with the unavoidable escalation of their power consumption. It is unknown how this energy demand for computational purposes will impact the surrounding environment. Here, we focus our attention on the heat dissipation of AI hyperscalers. Taking advantage of land surface temperature measurements acquired by remote sensing platforms over the last decades, we are able to obtain a robust assessment of the temperature increase recorded in the areas surrounding AI data centres globally. We estimate that the land surface temperature increases by 2°C on average after the start of...
| Authors | Andrea Marinoni, Erik Cambria, Weisi Lin et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CY |
| Published | 21 March 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 21 April 2026 |
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