Abnormally hot summer in Europe, how equipment burns and why

Hello.

Climate change has become a commonplace and obvious thing, we are used to different weather and just complain,

that sometimes she gives us trouble.Unfortunately, live we are witnessing the destruction of the usual order of things, but we cannot realize it, for this we need to take a look at the whole picture. Every year, humanity will face fundamental climate change - extreme temperatures in summer and winter, floods or drought that leads to forest fires. You don't have to be a meteorological scientist to know that something is already going wrong. In Europe, for more than a month, a heat wave, the temperature sets records one after another. For example, residents of Britain, looking at the weather forecast on their phones, may see a warning that there may be interruptions in communications, the heat is to blame.

What is so special about the temperature around 40degrees? Most of the comments sound like this: weaklings, they were afraid of such a temperature, we usually have 45 in the summer, and nothing, we live. I would like to respond to such comments with a story from my life.

Went to Hawaii on business (yes, sometimessuch), a heavenly place, a summer dress code. I was supposed to fly home via Los Angeles, but in the end it turned out that America was overwhelmed by snowfalls, and I had to fly through Chicago. The flight was postponed, the suitcase was left somewhere at the airport, I had to go to a hotel in the city in shorts and a T-shirt, throwing some kind of blanket over my shoulders and buying a hoodie there. The temperature by Moscow standards was nonsense, some minus ten degrees and snowfall. Under other circumstances, one could enjoy the weather and an unexpected stop in the city, but I didn’t get a tooth on a tooth. At the hotel, the first thing I did was take a hot shower, and then I went to a nearby store, where I got warm clothes, and felt like a man.

The problem is not the temperature itself, but thehow much it is expected in a particular place. Those regions where summer is considered hot, initially make adjustments for these temperatures, build buildings, roads, and install equipment accordingly. For example, in Dubai, cars are sold with improved air conditioning characteristics, they are more powerful than those installed in Europe or Russia. And this is understandable, high temperatures are the norm for this region. At the same time, it makes no sense to install high-capacity batteries, heated seats, steering wheels, as well as windows and mirrors in cars. For northern countries, cars, on the contrary, are equipped for sub-zero temperatures. And exactly the same story in any area, including infrastructure equipment. No company is willing to overpay to have its equipment fault-tolerant under the most stressful conditions. Shifting this to the above example, no one in Dubai buys cars for the company that must withstand sub-zero temperatures. This is wasteful and simply unnecessary, the likelihood of such temperatures looks like a low one.

Britain is a good example for our history,The country has a mild and humid oceanic climate. Foggy Albion is distinguished by mild winters, when frosts are short-term, and the minus does not last long, it is very light. This makes it possible to manage with minimal heating of houses, which became a problem in past winters, people literally froze. They could not withstand temperatures that were established for a long time. For data centers, the cold that happened was even beneficial in some ways, since the equipment heats up and allows you not to use energy for cooling, as is usually the case. For many data centers, the heating of residential buildings becomes a side income item, since they produce a lot of heat.

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Temperature records in the UK were set in 34 different places in a few days, with temperatures exceeding 40.3 degrees. It seems like quite a bit, doesn't it?

In Luton, near Londonthe temperature was about 37 degrees, there is a large airport, he was forced to interrupt his work for a while. Airport officials said the high temperature had damaged one of the runway slabs, causing it to rise. The repair and inspection of the runway surface took half a day. This is one example of the fact that the airport was not built for such temperatures, the builders were guided by the usual British weather and took a margin in case of extreme temperatures, but did not take into account that real scenarios can be much harsher.

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Telecommunication equipment that costson the streets, has its own cooling, fans blow out hot air, work for wear and tear. And in countries where they are not ready for high temperatures, the parameters of air conditioners and fans are very different, they are simpler, less productive. For example, in Dubai, cooling is at its maximum level, in Moscow or St. Petersburg it can be said that it is average, in the UK it is a little easier, since the equipment endures rare hot days more or less calmly.

There is also the cumulative effect of the heat whenwarm weather is established for several days or longer. The equipment does not have time to cool down, and air conditioners work non-stop, at some point they begin to fail. Many air conditioners are not designed for this mode of operation, they must turn off and “rest” a little. 24/7 equipment is a different class of equipment. I do not have statistics on how quickly equipment in Europe broke down due to abnormally high temperatures, but world experience shows that it usually burns 2-3 times more than usual. And it is very difficult to predict its failure.

Let's go back to Britain and look at whathow data centers felt, and let's take those of the highest class used by the largest companies. That is, obviously those that are equipped with the best equipment, there are no problems with air conditioning in them by default. For example, Oracle's data center, which provides cloud infrastructure for third-party companies, was shut down for almost a day! The reason, which was named in Oracle, is in unusually high temperatures, the data center is located in south London. In the data center building, first one of their cooling systems was turned off, then the second - the equipment was turned off automatically so that it would not be damaged.

Google Cloud also had a number of servicesdisconnected, the reason is the high temperature, the automation turned off the servers so that they would not fail. The heat was the reason that a huge amount of equipment in Britain went into failure.

But we do not consider how highthe temperature affected the electricity suppliers, their situation is no better, there were local power outages. No light, no cooling. The situation is worse when there was electricity, but the voltage was jumping, which could disable ordinary people's equipment that was not protected by stabilizers. In the Russian regions, such situations are also frequent, hence our love for stabilizers that protect houses - a sort of vital necessity. But for Europe, this is still new, they are not ready for this.

The main problem is that at home andurban infrastructure was built for other temperature regimes, it is impossible to instantly replace equipment with one that can withstand high temperatures in summer and low temperatures in winter. Read how people froze in winter in America, lost their homes. This is exactly the same moment, unusual temperatures that no one expected.

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An obvious conclusion that can be drawn from the exampleBritain: the cost of business for mobile operators will increase in any scenario. They will either have equipment that fails more often, or they will have to buy equipment that is designed for such temperatures. And this way and that, additional costs are obtained, which cannot be avoided. But you can also remember about power outages, the need to equip stations with batteries or diesel generators, which is still a problem in Britain, the percentage of fail-safe sites is about two and a half times lower than in Russia. And these are also attempts to save money, increase the profitability of the business, relying on the fact that nothing bad will happen to the energy sector. So you have to catch up and spend more and more money, not to mention the electricity that goes into heating.

I don't touch on fires at all,due to prolonged heat and dry weather. I do not touch the issue of the availability of water, which is often needed for the same data centers, but it may not be available. The climate is changing, and extremely fast, no one can fully prepare for these changes, and it's just very expensive.

Not the first time I recommend you read the bookDavid Wallace-Wells "Desert Earth", which describes many scenarios for the future, some are already coming true before our eyes. And this is fascinatingly scary, because on the air everything is bursting at the seams, but few people pay attention to this in everyday affairs, brush it off, as if this has already happened in history. In the observed history of mankind, what we see today is happening for the first time.

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