By Chris Stokel-Walker
Publication Date: 2026-03-27 15:00:00
The number of data centers is increasing rapidly
JIM LO SCALZO/EPA/Shutterstock
Data centers 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 center heat islands that may already be affecting up to 340 million people.
It is predicted that the number of data centers built worldwide will increase enormously. JLL, a real estate firm, estimates that data center capacity will double between 2025 and 2030 – with AI expected to account for half of that demand.
Andrea Marinoni of the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues found that the amount of energy needed to run a data center had been steadily increasing recently and was likely to “explode” in the coming years, so they wanted to quantify the impact.
The researchers took satellite measurements of land surface temperatures over the past 20 years and compared them to the geographic coordinates of…
