“Data centres built to power AIs produce so much heat that they can raise the surface temperature of the land around them by several degrees – creating so-called data centre heat islands that may already be affecting up to 340 million people”
“land surface temperatures increased by an average of 2°C (3.6°F) in the months after an AI data centre started operations. In the most extreme cases, the increase in temperature was 9.1°C (16.4°F)”
“The effect wasn’t limited to the immediate surroundings of the data centres: the team found increased temperatures up to 10 kilometres away. Seven kilometres away, there was only a 30 per cent reduction in the intensity”