As Europeans struggle to keep cool amid a record-breaking heat wave, Big Tech faces its own battle to keep the powerful chips running in AI data centers.
This week’s temperatures have highlighted the impact weather can have on infrastructure such as factories, nuclear power plants and data centers. Additional demand from air conditioning can overload power grids and lead to power outages that can impact infrastructure. And not just in Europe.
Storms have become the main cause of damage in the last three years ZurichRisk portfolio of US data center builders. It is now responsible for a third of the company’s losses, Patrick McBride, head of international construction at Zurich, told CNBC.
Severe weather can no longer be treated as background stress.
Patrick McBride
Head of International Construction in Zurich
Many data centers are moving to suburban or rural areas, where land is cheaper and records of extreme weather events are often limited because the areas are largely underdeveloped, he said. “Now we have $3 billion worth of assets and over a mile of exposure to these events.”
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Why insurers are keeping an eye on climate risk
A recent study by climate risk analytics firm First Street found that 79% of global data center capacity faces increased risks from acute climate hazards such as floods, extreme winds and wildfires, which can disrupt operations, increase downtime and drive up insurance and repair costs.
According to a study, almost 80% of data center capacity is at increased risk of climate hazards such as floods and fires
“It’s not about whether climate risks will impact the digital infrastructure revolution,” said Joe Macejak, head of digital infrastructure for U.S. real estate at Swamp risk, said CNBC. “It’s more about how customers and stakeholders in the digital infrastructure industry identify, quantify and manage these climate risks within their respective tolerances.”
If they don’t manage these risks, companies could face higher costs and operational disruptions – which “poses a threat to the capital stocks that power the AI-driven data center revolution,” Macejak added.
Where new data centers are exposed to severe weather risks
This year, 64% of data center capacity under construction is outside traditional centers such as Northern Virginia and is moving to so-called frontier markets such as West Texas, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Ohio, Zurich’s McBride said. He added that facilities in these areas could be at increased risk of “tornadoes, hail and strong winds wreaking havoc on huge rooftops where heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment is exposed.” [heating and cooling systems]Cooling towers and energy systems such as solar systems.”
McBride cited Brazil as an example of an emerging data center market that may face heat issues. Meanwhile, data centers in Europe are moving to areas like the Iberian Peninsula, where temperatures are also rising.
“Severe weather is no longer something that can be considered a background exposure,” McBride said. “It’s one of the first things we and the owners we work with look for.”
It’s not just the data center that could be affected by extreme heat.
“Extreme heat simultaneously stresses data centers and the network they rely on,” said Mishal Thadani, CEO and co-founder of AI software platform Rhizome. The company uses models to help utilities identify vulnerabilities to climate threats.
Cooling accounts for about 40% of data center energy use even at normal temperatures, and that number increases in extreme heat, just as air conditioning drives up demand on the grid, Thadani said. “Data centers require the most energy precisely when the network is least available.”
As an example, he cited the Italian city of Turin, which experienced maximum temperatures of around 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) in May. The heat wave exposed the city’s underground cables to thermal stress and caused repeated power outages, Thadani said.
“Now add facilities that each use as much power as a hundred thousand homes. The heat and the load hit the same lines at the same time. Data center load can be reduced during the worst hours, but most planning models still don’t take into account how much more common extreme heat occurs,” Thadani added.
How operators adapt data center design
MicrosoftOne of the hyperscalers leading the data center expansion told CNBC that they are preparing for changing conditions.
Microsoft designs its data centers to “operate reliably in a variety of environmental conditions, with site selection, redundant systems and real-time monitoring helping to manage risks from extreme heat and severe weather,” a spokesperson told CNBC on Thursday.
Tech giant Nvidia said last week that its new AI servers can operate their coolant at 45 degrees Celsius, up from previously lower temperatures. Increasing cooler temperatures by just one degree can reduce cooling energy costs by about 4%, Nvidia says.
Read more data center news
“These developments advance technology for everyone involved in the industry,” said Aaron Lewis, chief commercial officer of global data center solutions at the HVAC company. Johnson Controls. The company already does tests data center cooling equipment to ensure it can withstand various temperatures.
Lewis said he recently saw for the first time how a customer in Europe included a “climate change factor” in the specification so that its data centers were designed for temperature increases.
Ultimately, the market will have a “diverse set of systems and applications, and as technologies evolve, we are finding ways to transfer heat more effectively. The pace of innovation driven by the data center boom will allow us to continue to operate in some of these conditions well into the future,” Lewis told CNBC.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/29/ai-data-centers-heatwave-climate-risk-weather.html
