Problems of rising sea levels have extended beyond our natural world and are set to take a toll on the Internet. We must safeguard our digital space before it’s too late
Internet, the most powerful communication platform in the world, is the hallmark of our modern times. Continuous efforts are being made to ensure the quality of the content on the Internet and also to improve its speed while keeping the users insulated from unfair practices by Internet service providers (ISP) — the campaign to ensure net neutrality is one such movement. However, the world is largely unaware of a silent threat to the Internet from unexpected quarters: Climate change. This little thought of threat factor has the potential to have a major impact on the Internet as we know of today, but curiously enough, less is known about it and even lesser is being done about the threat perception.
Today, climate change threatens many facets of modern human life, from eroding coastlines, climbing temperatures and ocean acidification. But as it is becoming increasingly apparent, these problems are now poised to expand beyond our natural world to percolate our digital world. This is clear from the fact that climate change-fuelled sea level rises stand to threaten a good deal of Internet infrastructure which will go underwater in the next 15 years. These startling findings are the result of the latest study conducted by the University of Madison-Wisconsin and the University of Oregon. This impact can devastate the Internet infrastructure in the coming years even if evasive measures are taken immediately.
The study found that more than 4,000 miles of buried fiber optic cable may be underwater and 1,100 nodes may be surrounded by water in just 15 years. To put that in perspective, New York, one of the most at-risk metropolitan areas, would lose nearly 20 per cent of its metro conduit and 32 per cent of its long-haul conduit to rising sea levels. That’s enough to cripple Internet access in the area.
To come to this concerning conclusion, researchers relied on the Internet Atlas, a map charting the physical location of the Internet. This map geocodes infrastructure from more than 1,500 Internet service providers around the world.
The researchers conducting the study focused on two kinds of infrastructure: Buried conduit, which includes long-haul and metro fiber; and nodes, including landing points, where deep sea transoceanic fiber comes ashore, data centers, colocation facilities, and points of presence that house servers, routers, and other hardware. On the outside, nodes can look like small huts and non-descript buildings but on the inside, they are the points where buried cables terminate. These details of the study confirm the fact that it was a thorough research and even minutiae details were accounted for.
Problems of rising sea levels on account of climate change have plagued us for long. Gauge readings, and most recently, satellite measurements tell us that over the past century, the global mean sea level (GMSl) has risen by four to eight inches (10 to 20 centimeters). However, the annual rate of rise over the past 20 years has been 0.13 inches (3.2 millimeters) a year, roughly twice the average speed of preceding 80 years. This steady growth in the levels is now assuming concerning proportions and affecting hitherto untouched areas, such as the Internet.
The deeds of mankind now seem to be coming around a full circle to a situation where the consequences of development are adversely affecting the fruits of development. Over the past century, the burning of fossil fuels and other human and natural activities released enormous amount of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.
These emissions have caused the Earth’s surface temperature to rise and the oceans absorb about 80 per cent of this additional heat. When sea levels rise this rapidly, as they have been doing, even a small increase can have devastating effects on the coastal habitats. As rising seawater reaches further inland, it can cause destructive erosion, wetland flooding, aquifer and agricultural soil contamination, and loss of habitat for fish, birds, and plants.
The problem of rising sea levels may get worse before it gets any better. Predictions say that the warming of the planet will continue and is likely to accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the degree to which they will rise, is an inexact science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that we can expect the oceans to rise between 11 and 38 inches (28 to 98 centimeters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the US East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, place sea level rise to 23 feet (seven meters), enough to submerge london.
But for the issue at hand, it is absolutely essential to preserve the Internet from the growing threat of sea level rise. Active strategies are already being pursued to preserve communication architecture in the face of climate change. For instance, one solution is to potentially incorporate problematic networks into already existing infrastructure.
Yet another possible method that can be explored is to set up a seawall, which bolster the already existing infrastructure of the Internet. The world has realised that it does not seem to make sense to wait until the waters rise and cables fail. The onus has to be to try from today and prevent the disaster before it occurs so that the expensive world of reactive ad hoc measures can be avoided and the Internet is safeguarded from climate change while there is still time.
(The writer is an environmental journalist)
