The physical architecture of the internet is cables. Reasonably accessible cables on the ocean floor, and terrestrial ones running through buried pipes. Some cables snake through ducts under streets and buildings. The internet faces threats in coastal cities from climate change as ocean levels rise.
How Severe Are These Threats?
Climatologists from the Universities of Madison-Wisconsin, and Oregon have been quantifying the risks. They believe that “4,067 miles of fiber conduit will be under water, and 1,101 nodes will be surrounded by water in the next 15 years.
“Communication infrastructure in New York, Miami, and Seattle respectively, are at highest risk,” they warn. If we do nothing, they have concerns that data centers, internet exchange points, and landing stations for undersea cables could cease to function. Data exchange will begin to slow. It is inconceivable to think of losing the internet that powers our lives with information.
Short and Long Term Solutions to Rising Oceans
New York City epitomizes the consequences of climate change the internet faces. The City has 43 data centers housing servers, routers and other equipment including battery backups. There are also 43 long haul cables, for which the researchers would like to see protection too.
They do not believe we should wait for a sudden storm surge at high tide. Because they would like research to begin into the possibility of seawalls so we don’t have to respond with cell on light trucks (COLTS), as website Big Think believes may be the case. However none of this may have been necessary had our parents had ears to hear David Keeling’s warning in 1961.
If New York City’s cables do vanish beneath the ocean, they may reappear centuries later if we manage to reverse global warming. Then archeologists may dig them out and say, “How peculiar. They used cables when there were other options we use today. Especially, since they knew the challenges their internet faced from the great warming, that was accelerating in 2018 while they slept.”
Related
Record High Temperatures Around the World
Climate Change and the Harsh Consequences
Preview Image: New York City On the Ocean
