Risk that extreme heat exceeds a site's designed cooling capacity, forcing systems to shut down to avoid destruction.
Heatwave risk refers to the possibility that extreme outside temperatures exceed a data center's designed cooling capacity, since a site is sized for a range of historical local temperatures that an extreme heat episode can now exceed. When the cooling system can no longer remove the heat generated by the equipment, the operator must reduce load or shut down servers to prevent physical destruction, turning a climate hazard into a direct service interruption. This risk particularly affects sites built to older climate standards, in regions where extreme heat episodes are intensifying faster than anticipated at the time of design, and it directly overlaps with the physical climate insurability already documented for other infrastructure. For insurers, this peril raises the question of the thermal design margin an operator retained against updated climate scenarios, rather than the past weather history the original construction standards were based on, a gap that affects the whole sector as extreme episodes become more frequent.
In July 2022, a record heatwave in the United Kingdom exceeded the cooling capacity of Google and Oracle data centers in the London area, causing cooling systems to shut down and resulting in several hours of service outages.
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