||| FROM SCIENCE ALERT |||
Data centers need water to stay cool and functional, and lots of it: The larger facilities can consume as much water a day as a town of 50,000 people, and because much of the cooling involves evaporation, freshwater is often preferred.
That raises serious questions about the environmental impact of the cloud compute we use to run AI queries, host photos and videos, stream music, and all the rest. Researchers are trying to get a handle on what the impacts on water usage actually are.
In a new study published in Environmental Science & Technology, researchers led by a team from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the US mapped the location of the 9,347 currently identified data centers worldwide.
When the local water conditions of all these sites were analyzed, the team found that around 25 percent of data centers are in areas where there’s a water gap during at least one month of the year – that’s when water demand outstrips supply.
The research has been published in Environmental Science & Technology.
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