Arizona data centers raise Phoenix temperatures by up to 4 degrees: Air-cooled data centers are creating thermal plumes that exacerbate public health risks and aggravate heat production in towns and cities.

• Data centers are raising the temperature in towns and cities
• The researchers recorded variations of up to four degrees
• Heat needs to be taken into account when planning and building data centers.

Data centers operate thousands of GPUs to solve computational problems, generating heat in the process. This heat then needs to be removed to keep the data center cool and running at peak efficiency.

However, some data centers are emitting so much heat that it is raising temperatures in local towns and cities by several degrees. In some cases, heat islands with temperatures 16 degrees F higher have been recorded.