Climate change threatens supercomputers

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https://www.science.org/content/article/climate-change-threatens-supercomputers

By Jacklin Kwan, Science Magazine. 

Excerpt: Increasingly intense heat waves, wildfires, and droughts are forcing costly adaptations. ...In 2018, during a savage drought, the California wildfire known as the Camp Fire burned 620 square kilometers of land.... The disaster also had a ripple effect far from the flames, at a supercomputer facility operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) 230 kilometers away. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) typically relies on outside air to help cool its hot electronics. But smoke and soot from the fire forced engineers to cool recirculated air, driving up humidity levels. ...Managers at high-performance computing (HPC) facilities are waking up to the costly effects of climate change and the wildfires and storms it is intensifying. With their heavy demands for cooling and massive appetite for energy, HPC centers...are vulnerable, says Natalie Bates, chair of an HPC energy efficiency working group set up by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). “Weather extremes are making the design and location of supercomputers far more difficult.” Climate change can bring not only heat, but also increased humidity, reducing the efficiency of the evaporative coolers many HPC centers rely on. Humidity can also threaten the computers themselves, as NERSC discovered during a second fire. As interior air was recirculated, condensation inside server racks led to a blowout in one cabinet, Bourassa says. For its next supercomputer, set to open in 2026, NERSC is planning to install power-hungry chiller units, similar to air conditioners, that would both cool and dehumidify outside air. The cost of such adaptations is motivating some HPC centers to migrate to cooler and drier climates, places like Canada and Finland.… 

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