© Flickr user Ossy a mess of fiber optic cablesConnectivity issues could get much worse
The internet has a vast and messy physical underpinning
Snaking beneath roads and strung across oceans, hundreds of thousands of miles of cables and their connections make up the backbone of the internet. Despite its magnitude, this network is increasingly vulnerable to sea levels inching their way higher, according to research presented at an academic conference in Montreal this week. The findings estimate that within 15 years, thousands of miles of what should be land-bound cables in the United States will be submerged underwater.
“Most of the climate change-related impacts are going to happen very soon,” says Paul Barford, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin and lead author of the paper.
The immediacy of the threat stems from an unfortunate coinciding of location—much of the infrastructure that supports the internet just so happens to be situated in places most prone to rising waters. Internet traffic from our devices pings through
Buried
What’s more, the parts of the system that are designed to be waterproof are also vulnerable. While pipes carrying streams of information along the ocean floor can withstand the stresses of the sea, these are very different than the cables buried on land. Ocean-faring tubing is endowed with “
A perpetual pool of salt water could take its toll on infrastructure. Connections may corrode and water molecules could wedge their way into microscopic cracks in
To see where the physical backings of the internet are most vulnerable, Barford compared a map of internet infrastructure that he helped develop, with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Digital Coast project, projecting worst-case scenarios for sea level rise in the United States over the next hundred years. The overlay showed that Miami, New York, and Seattle were particularly at risk from rising waters.
Swaths of New York
“When I actually saw the results, I was kind of horrified,” says Ramakrishnan Durairajan, a computer scientist at the University of Oregon who collaborated on the project. “All of these locations are where my friends and family live.”
Durairajan emphasizes the analysis is a conservative estimate because it only takes into account predicted coastal flooding from sea-level rise, not any threats posed by future storms. Even with
The extent of our communication system at risk, and the sheer amount of physical stuff supporting the
And, as Barford points out, all that complexity was built without considering the effects of climate change. To keep this modern marvel going, experts will have to think up some more resilient solutions—and they need to do it soon. “This is not something that we can take our time with," Barford says.