Technology Hundreds of millions of people live close enough to data centres used to power AI to feel warmer average temperatures in their local area Facebook / Meta Twitter / X icon Linkedin Reddit Email The number of data centres is rapidly increasing JIM LO SCALZO/EPA/Shutterstock Data centres 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 centre heat islands that may already be affecting up to 340 million people. The number of data centres built around the world is forecast to rise enormously. JLL, a real estate company, estimates that data centre capacity will double between 2025 and 2030 – with AI expected to account for half that demand. Andrea Marinoni at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues saw that the amount of energy needed to run a data centre had been steadily increasing of late and was likely to “explode” in the coming years, so wanted to quantify the impact.…