Emerging research from Arizona State University (ASU) finds data centers are warming surrounding neighborhoods by several degrees Fahrenheit, a preliminary finding that could pose health risks and intensify the debate over the AI-driven expansion of the buildings across the Phoenix area.
Led by David Sailor, Ph.D., Director of ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, the research team found consistent evidence of a heat plume extending beyond data center boundaries and into nearby communities.
To measure these effects, researchers conducted what Sailor described as “episodic, opportunistic measurements,” using mobile temperature sensors mounted on vehicles that simultaneously circled data centers to capture short-term temperature variations. Sailor joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the early findings, research and what results could mean for the future development of Phoenix data centers.
“We’ve made measurements all around data centers on different kinds of days, different kinds of wind conditions, and very consistently we see downwind effect,” Sailor said. “Downwind, it’s warmer by 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit, sometimes even higher 3 or even 4 degrees Fahrenheit in spots.”
According to Sailor, much of the hot air generated from the data center rises and strays away from neighborhoods; however, when the hot air gets caught in the wind, that’s when the neighborhoods heat up.
Data centers generate heat because as the servers take in electricity, they release heat.
“If you think about your own laptop, you just feel the back of the laptop, just imagine not one laptop but a thousand, 10,000, 100,000 laptops spitting out that heat,” Sailor said.
Data centers are constantly running which means they are constantly generating heat and impacting the nearby neighborhoods. According to Sailor, most of the effects of heat are landing in areas 100 to 300 yards from the data centers, but research has found elevated temperatures as far as 500 yards away.
Even though the problem is increasing, it is not a new one.
“It’s pretty well established that in a city, the heat that’s rejected from your vehicles, from your air conditioning system on your house, all of that adds up and can warm cities by a degree or 2 Fahrenheit,” Sailor said.
