Data Centers Are Facing a Climate Crisis

There were cooling failures that caused the data centers in London to go offline. The impact wasn't limited to those near the center: That particular location services customers in the US and Pacific region. The heat caused problems for US customers of the cloud-based data center. The company blamed the weather for the power failure.

Data centers need to prepare for a new normal because the UK Met Office suggests that the record heat was a sign of things to come.

There is a 93 percent chance that one year between now and 2026 will be the hottest on record. That won't be a one off. "For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise." Sea ice and glaciers will melt, sea level will rise, and our weather will become more extreme.

Data centers that keep our planet's collective knowledge online will be affected by the weather shift.

Is they prepared? Simon Harris, head of critical infrastructure at Business Critical Solutions, says there is an issue with the data center stock built in the UK and Europe. It doesn't end there. A survey by the Uptime Institute shows that 45% of US data centers have experienced an extreme weather event that threatened their ability to operate.

Sophia Flucker is the director at UK data center consulting firm Operational Intelligence. The data center will be built close to a weather station that has temperature data.

There is a problem. The data shows when the temperature in the UK didn't reach 40 degrees Celsius. Harris said that we are on the fringes of a changing climate.

It wasn't that long ago that we were designing cooling systems for a peak outdoor temperature. They are over 8 degrees hotter than they were designed for. Data center companies and the clients they are working for are profit-driven enterprises. The cost of building a data center has gone up in almost every market in the last few years, and construction companies are advised to keep costs low.

If we went from 32 degrees to 42 degrees, it would be a big deal. When temperatures rise, you have to make everything bigger to support it. It needs to be done with care.