“Most of the damage that’s going to be done in the next 100 years will be done sooner than later. That surprised us. The expectation was that we’d have 50 years to plan for it. We don’t have 50 years”. Paul Barford
Rising sea levels, caused by the thermal expansion of ocean water and Arctic amplification due to climate change, “are set to damage fiber optic cables, submerge network points of presence (PoPs) and surround data centers, researchers have warned” ( Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Carol Barford, and Paul Barford, Lights Out: Climate Change Risk to Internet Infrastructure).
These changes will not arrive in the year 2100, which is the extremely selfish delusion that we can kick the climate change can of worms down the road for our children and grandchildren to solve. No, these changes to our internet infrastructure will be here within 15 years and like other expected impacts to our civilization, we are not prepared for it.
Fiber optic cables are buried underground, “which - unlike submarine cables - are not designed for prolonged periods of submersion”.
DataDynamics reports on the findings.
According to the study, in 15 years some 1,186 miles (1,908km) of long-haul fiber and 2,429 miles (3,909km) of metro fiber will be underwater, while 1,101 termination points will be surrounded by the sea. “Given the fact that most fiber conduit is underground, we expect the effects of sea level rise could be felt well before the 15 year horizon,” the paper states.
Additionally, “in 2030, about 771 PoPs, 235 data centers, 53 landing stations, 42 IXPs will be affected by a one-foot rise in sea level.”
The US networks most at risk belong to AT&T, CenturyLink, and Inteliquent, with a particularly strong impact expected across New York, Miami, and Seattle metropolitan areas. “Given the large number of nodes and miles of fiber conduit that are at risk, the key takeaway is that developing mitigation strategies should begin soon.”
Internet companies should begin hardening their networks soon or we could lose service in preparation for catastrophic storms such as Sandy, Maria and Harvey when internet service is critical in the case of emergencies.
Geek.com adds to the story:
To get a preview of how bad this can be, we need only look at the flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy. It flooded large chunks of New York’s cable systems, and that corresponded to an uptick in outages across the United States for the next few days. Prolonged waterlogging and inundation, though, would be much worse. And, we’re only talking about the relatively meager rise expected in the next decade and a half. Still, that could severely impact those in coastal cities… like, y’know. Most of the major ones. And due to the connected nature of the web, that will likely lead to similar problems for people all over the US.
“Hopefully, our findings will alert people that we don’t have 100 years to solve this,” Barford said. “We need to start looking at it very soon so that we can take steps to ensure our communication capability in the United States.”
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