Europeans love to get a nice warm sunny day; however, this time, summer has been nothing less than torture for people living in like the UK. Apart from people, data-based businesses and data centers are also suffering at the hands of heat; in late July, data centers throughout London went off for a day due to cooling problems.
Things were the same around the US and Pacific countries, where people faced limited access to key Google services for hours. Other famous data centers, such as Oracle, also got struck by the heat and stated ‘unseasonal temperatures.’
Meteorological departments worldwide reported that we would keep facing such extreme temperatures; thus, data centers and businesses need to accept these temperatures as the new normal and accordingly make changes for the coming years.
According to the World Meteorological Department, any year between now and 2026 will be the hottest year we have ever experienced. But how will this constant temperature rise stop? While talking about the heat waves, the WMO secretary-general said, “For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise.” “Alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise, and our weather will become more extreme,” he added.
The world needs to understand that as we go on to increase our greenhouse gas output, we continue to harm the ozone and ultimately increase the amount of global warming we will have to experience. Once global warming and rising temperatures get out of hand, humans and things made by humans, such as the data centers that hold all our online information, will suffer.
Are Data Centers Prepared For Climate Change?
“It wasn’t that long ago that we were designing cooling systems for a peak outdoor temperature of 32 degrees,” says Jon Healy, an employee at a UK data center. Now with temperatures rising above 40 degrees, the cooling systems in data centers are 8 degrees higher than what they were designed for.
Cooling system designs and mechanisms are being elevated to meet the current temperature requirements, but because data centers also have to take steps keeping their profits in mind, it can be difficult for a lot of them to keep up with rising costs if the conditions stay the same for the years to come,
Larger companies with sufficient funding are experimenting with newer ways to keep their data centers protected from the heat; liquid cooling is also a solution in which data centers are trying to cool their servers by passing liquid by the equipment and transferring heat to keep temperatures low. However, liquid cooling in large data centers can be costly and requires professionals aware of both sides of the coin; IT and cooling.
Between 2018 and 2020, Microsoft tested some unusual ways to insulate its data centers from temperature changes; the tech giant built a data center 117 feet below the sea in Scotland. With time, we will only see more and more innovative ideas data companies use to protect themselves against the heat.
