Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

cocacola1

“Everyone in McKinney is dead”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzA8DcAiijc

nemomarx

Out of curiosity, how are large data centers zoned?

jghn

All I can think of when reading this was Hank Hill yelling at his neighbor: "Dale you giblet-head, we live in Texas, where it's already 110 in the summer. And if it gets one degree hotter I'm gonna kick your ass!" [1] [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0620288/characters/nm0362548/?i...

jeffbee

"The attribution of this warming to data center waste heat is supported by the consistent alignment of the temperature signal with the prevailing wind direction across multiple sites, dates, and meteorological conditions. " Well, no? That could also mean that the heat island effect of the (statutorily mandated) employee parking lot is causal.

duplessitous

> The mean air temperature on the upwind side of the facility was approximately 42.7 °C, increasing to 43.5 °C in the neighborhood near the eastern boundary of the data center campus on the downwind side. The observed ΔT of approximately 0.8 °C extended roughly 500 m downwind Seems like we do observe heating but a much smaller average delta T than the title would hint at; I didn't see a max distance they evaluated over, seems like 500-1000m was their search window from their text. The next paragraph discusses how one of the sites they compare to is a relatively lower average temperate than the rest of Phoenix. Not really convinced by this methodology. Seems like doing something in a flat field with an array of temperature sensors would be a much more robust way to look at heating effects over some reasonable distance. Plenty of data centers fit the bill of flat and semi-isolated, curious why they chose these sites to look at

kissiel

Reminder: 4 degrees = 0.0698131701 rad (article says 2.2 [C/K], btw)

ck2

so now we are speed-running global warming there are now record setting gas turbine sales instead of solar/nuclear * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk8ziQCWK1w and for what? so we can have totally useless "AI" customer service agents where you still have to demand to talk to a human to properly get a problem solved

metalsiliconYT

The key is this says at distances up to 500m downwind. This is a nothing burger sorry

atleastoptimal

The whole data center heat/water thing is like not even in the top 100 risks/issues related to AI, but it's all people seem to care about. Why is that?

MSKJ

Interesting, as we increase our total global power consumption, losses in the form of heat will increase proportionally. This is more of a zoning problem "...downwind air temperature warming as high as 2.2 °C, with average downwind air temperatures 0.7–0.9 °C warmer than corresponding upwind areas. Thermal signatures were detectable at distances up to 500 m from facility perimeters"

varenc

Using energy always raises nearby temperatures since all energy becomes heat. If any facility is using 36 MW of electricity, then 36 MW of heat is going to be entering the environment somewhere. Though I think what's interesting here is that the effects of this extra heat is highly localized to urban areas. But just trying to say this isn't data center specific. A steel mill with 36MW of electric arc furnaces is going to release the same 36MW of heat into the general environment.

dwoldrich

I cannot figure out if this data center panic is legit or trumped up. There are legitimate nation-state and political entities that would love to create pressure for degrowth in this area. And, pollution and natural resources are a concern, yes, fine, sure. NIMBY happens, I get it ... *BUT*, we've been building huge data centers for decades and they are minuscule compared to the size of the earth. My skeptic meter maxed out when i saw a Tesla with a "End Data Centers" bumper sticker on it. This is just the latest popular panic, isn't it?

xnx

Now compare to how much an asphalt parking lot raises temperatures.

bdcravens

If only we had the same amount of concern about oil refineries and gas stations. https://environmentalintegrity.org/news/13-oil-refineries-in... https://www.theenergymix.com/gas-stations-leave-behind-toxic...

ansley

With all the data centers being built - who is using all of this compute? Am i really underestimating how demanding it is to be using ChatGPT or whatever for basic tasks? The benefit to effort ratio seems fishy to me.

fauria

4 degrees Fahrenheit: > " ... air temperature warming as high as 2.2 °C ... "

K0balt

A modern data center (1GW) is about the same as 140k additional cars in traffic in terms of direct heating. Seems more likely that the heating is climate change driven primarily. But, 140k cars 24/7 is a lot of cars, so???

applicative

Are people thinking it is better to get AI from Xi?

thegrim33

If even on Hacker News a topic like this can't be objectively discussed, what hope do we really have? What is the solution? Even in a place like this, the comments are full of extremist ideology, bickering, people arguing from feelings, people just repeating echo chambers mantras, and a significant portion of the comments are probably from inauthentic/propaganda accounts. We're incapable of just using a place like this to objectively, dispassionately, discus the facts/data and properly debate the various analyses of those facts. I really feel like we need some sort of new revolution in terms of online communication, how it's done. How people share information and communicate. I just don't see how the current systems can continue existing without leading to societal disaster.

epistasis

Just wait until people hear about the temperature increases caused by parking lots....