World's Internet Infrastructure Is Drowning, As Earth's Sea Levels Continue To Rise
At its core, the Internet is basically just a network of other networks. And in order to achieve that, there need to be actual cables connecting computers across the globe.
Unfortunately, as the global sea level continues to rise, these transcontinental, sub-sea communication cables are in jeopardy.
In effect, our Internet is drowning.
A study from last year appears to be coming true, which predicted that the world's rising waters would end up inundating low-lying fiber optic cables and data stations within the next 15 years.
Computer scientist Paul Barford, from the University of Wisconsin spent the last few years scraping the Internet with his student Ramakrishnan Durairajan for publicly available information of where US telcos have laid down their infrastructure. They combined that with information on rising sea levels provided by Carol Barford, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
What they found was that vast swathes of Internet cabling and the like would likely be underwater within the next 15 years. That's thousands of miles along coastal cities in just the US alone. In India, that could be places like Mumbai as well for instance, and no one is making an effort to prevent this yet.
"Most of the damage that's going to be done in the next 100 years will be done sooner than later," said Barford. "That surprised us. The expectation was that we'd have 50 years to plan for it. We don't have 50 years."
In just the US, the researchers estimated more than 6,400 km of buried fibre optic cable will be submerged by 2033. A lot of those are also cables linking North America with the rest of the world. In effect, that could also mean the rest of the world safe from sea-levels rising in the short term will still be affected by a lack of access to US-based websites and servers.
"The first instinct will be to harden the infrastructure," said Barford, "But keeping the sea at bay is hard. We can probably buy a little time, but in the long run it's just not going to be effective."