A new pre-print from researchers at Cambridge, NTU, and NUS uses satellite measurements of temperatures near AI hyperscaler locations worldwide and finds a consistent, sharp effect: within a month of a data centre coming online, land surface temperatures in the surrounding area rise by an average of 2°C and stay there. The range across facilities runs from 0.3°C to 9.1°C. The heat island effect extends up to 10km from the facility and remains above 1°C out to 4.5km.
Here are the authors' key findings in graph form:
