Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A study published by Computer Science Professor Paul Barford claims that critical parts of the Internet will be submerged under rising seas in the next 15 years.
Study suggests buried internet infrastructure at risk as sea levels rise
July 16, 2018 By Terry Devitt
For news mediaThousands of miles of buried fiber optic cable in densely populated coastal regions of the United States may soon be inundated by rising seas, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Oregon.
The study, presented here today (July 16, 2018) at a meeting of internet network researchers, portrays critical communications infrastructure that could be submerged by rising seas in as soon as 15 years, according to the study’s senior author, Paul Barford, a UW–Madison professor of computer science.
“Most of the damage that’s going to be done in the next 100 years will be done sooner than later,” says Barford, an authority on the “physical internet” — the buried fiber optic cables, data centers, traffic exchanges and termination points that are the nerve centers, arteries and hubs of the vast global information network. “That surprised us. The expectation was that we’d have 50 years to plan for it. We don’t have 50 years.”
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The peer-reviewed study combined data from the Internet Atlas, a comprehensive global map of the internet’s physical structure, and projections of sea level incursion from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The study, which only evaluated risk to infrastructure in the United States, was shared today with academic and industry researchers at the Applied Networking Research Workshop, a meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Internet Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
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Read more: https://news.wisc.edu/study-suggests-buried-internet-infrastructure-at-risk-as-sea-levels-rise/
The abstract of the study;
Lights Out: Climate Change Risk to Internet Infrastructure
Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Carol Barford, Paul Barford University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin – Madison
In this paper we consider the risks to Internet infrastructure in the US due to sea level rise. Our study is based on sea level incursion projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) [12] and Internet in- frastructure deployment data from Internet Atlas [24]. We align the data formats and assess risks in terms of the amount and type of infrastructure that will be under water in dif- ferent time intervals over the next 100 years. We find that 4,067 miles of fiber conduit will be under water and 1,101 nodes (e.g., points of presence and colocation centers) will be surrounded by water in the next 15 years. We further quantify the risks of sea level rise by defining a metric that considers the combination of geographic scope and Internet infrastructure density. We use this metric to examine differ- ent regions and find that the New York, Miami, and Seattle metropolitan areas are at highest risk. We also quantify the risks to individual service provider infrastructures and find that CenturyLink, Inteliquent, and AT&T are at highest risk. While it is difficult to project the impact of countermeasures such as sea walls, our results suggest the urgency of devel- oping mitigation strategies and alternative infrastructure deployments.
Read more: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~pb/anrw18_final.pdf
The following table of absurd sea level rise estimates from the full paper (same link as above) shows where it all went wrong for Professor Barford and his team.
Table 1: Timeline of projected Global Mean Sea Level Rise. Data is based off of “Highest” (i.e., most extreme) projections.
| Year | 2030 | 2045 | 2060 | 2075 | 2090 | 2100 |
| Projected rise (ft) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
A one foot per 15 year sea level rise starting in the next few years should be an implausibly rapid acceleration to the current long term observed rate of around 3.2mm / year, or around one foot four six inches per century.
But Professor Barford claims this absurd estimate of 1ft every 15 years is an official NOAA scenario.
What next? The potential for harm from this nonsensical sea level estimate is not yet exhausted. The next step could easily be some politician or government bureaucrat seizing on Professor Barford’s warning, and authorizing the waste of vast sums of public money on unnecessary remedial works.
Update (EW): 1’6″ per century, not 1’4″ per century. (h/t David S)
Update (EW): 3.2mm = 0.01049869ft. 0.01049869ft x 100 = 1.049ft. 0.049 x 12 = just 0.58 inches – so 1’0.6”, just over 1ft. (h/t Randle Dewees, Climatebeagle and Retired_Engineer_Jim)
I guess we’ll have to bypass Oregon and Madison.
The world has changed. I can feel it in the air. Darkness spreads over the land. And there is the lingering uneasiness that you’re not sure if “research” is real or just another sort of prank designed to test the system.
Maybe they are alluding to the 100-year old steam pipes that explode in NYC. This is just another excuse to get someone else to pay for neglected pipes.
Possibly the failure of the 100 year old steam pipe was the result of failure of a $100 steam trap. Failed maintenance? Water hammer in a steam supply system is serious.
Why don’t they just use the more direct approach with the key words “New Orleans” and “levee boards?”
If it shuts down Twitter it is a good thing.
I have a rebuttal for Policy Makers: If the infrastructure of the Internet begins to be threatened by rising sea levels………………………..MOVE IT!
It would be like trying to get out of the way of a rampaging snail. It is likely that the infrastructure will naturally evolve away from any problem with sea level regardless of any problem with sea level. Whatever they are using now will be obsolete in 15 years, and the industry will have moved to something better and more efficient on its on.
own ?
well said Jim. Why do people assume things won’t change between now and then? The closer the water gets to the equipment (it’s not going to rise the full 15 year amount over night) the more the owners of said equipment will consider mitigation strategies, including moving the equipment to a better location.
Upgrading at the same time… Two birds, one stone !! LOL
I sent Paul Barford (study leader) a cordial e-mail with questions (pb@cs.wisc.edu). Will let you all know if I get a reply. However, if you go to NOAA’s DigitalCoast website (https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/) which is where the study’s authors got their flooding information, it seems the sea level rises are data points one can enter into the system (to see resultant flooding), and not necessarily “projections.”
More cordial than this?
“Dear Paul, you idiot. Please tell me how you can be so stupid and/or dishonest. Thank you.”
I left off “you idiot” and “you can be so etc.”
If the areas near the sea get flooded, then the people will leave, and there won’t be any need for internet in those areas, so the fact that the cables also get flooded will be meaningless.
As to backbones, the internet was designed to be flexible. Losing one or two won’t bring it down, and besides, they can be replaced.
Regardless, at present rates, the seas are only going to rise 40 to 45 mm in the next 15 years, at an absolute max. That’s not enough to flood anything.
We may have a classic example of what peer review really means.
Figure 1 of the paper has four maps and the bottom left is described as Los Angeles, however I think it’s the San Francisco bay area. When you zoom the image you can see the green dots of the infrastructure surrounding the SF bay.
By e-mail Professor Barford confirmed that that map is indeed the SF Bay and not LA.
It’s junk science all the way down.
Deleted by me
Here in Maine where we have lots of coastline, the tidal gauge in Portland Harbor read exactly the same in 2014 as it did in 1947. The businesses on Commercial Street
no more than 6 feet above the water occasionally have to deal with patrons getting their feet wet during storm surges but day in day out they do just fine.
Buried cable has to be waterproof so what is the problem?
Two words….levee boards
What is WRONG with you people! Some comments here are every bit as bad as you’d get on any Warmist Cult site. You’re aiming at the wrong target.
A. The thing is about infrastructure siting for transocean fiber cable termination. Transition from seabed fiber to land fiber.
B. The guy has every right to publish targeted conjecture based on ‘Worst case’ (sea level + storm surge) scenario as provided by EXPERT sources. He doesn’t need to be a climate scientist.
C He’s a college professor and higher ed is in real trouble. Publish or Perish is true and a fact, no matter what and getting worse.
– Never mind the whole thing is redundant because the terminal site owner/operators would have plans in place for that eventuality.
The focus of derision should be put on those sources. And the need to go gonzo in any paper you write in order to get reviewed and published.
If he tells the truth and the paper says ‘Hey, 97 % likelihood this wont need attention till 2050, at least,’ who’s gonna take it serious enough to publish it?
No one gets a free pass, because “they are just doing their job”, or just – whatever. No excuses.
“B. The guy has ever right to publish”
And we have every right to ridicule published papers that are ludicrous in their assumptions and prescriptions.
“B. The guy has every right to publish “
And everyone has the right to comment on that publication (including pointing out how impossible the scenario is given the real world sea level data), regardless if you approve of those comments or not.
Yep.. all that is true… but like I said, the problem is in the system, not in the de-facto REQUIRED paper.
Who knows… perhaps it’s really a left-handed slap at the chicken little cult.
Especially since it’s redundant and the operators are responsible for flooding contingencies.
No government notification/response should be necessary.
Roughly two inches in 15 years would be too generous since it includes the questionable adjustments of satellite altimeters to account for the imagined sinking of the level of the ocean floor – something of entirely no relevance to our concerns. More like one inch in fifteen years of ocean rise if current reliable tide gauge trends continue. So some unmentioned, bed-wetting nightmare has driven this computer scientists to imagine that an inch of sea level rise is actually 12 inches (compensating for something?) and that that the people who manage communication infrastructure aren’t smart enough to adjust their build over the next fifteen years to the same rate of sea level rise that has taken place throughout the entire Industrial Age.
And…paging Jim Hansen…the Major Degan pkwy is still NOT underwater. These guys are never held accountable for their projections.
Jeez, what’s with all the bad math?! LOL
“Math is hard”
Barbie
Eventually they arrived at a consensus, the correct one BTW.
Let he who has never misplaced a decimal throw the first stone.
Okay, now go after the nonprofit orgs and foundations that were behind all of this.
Yawn.
Throw this one on the trash heap with all the other failed climate catastrophe predictions.
That particular trash heap is already rather large.
That particular trash heap is the cause of sea level rise.
Sorry wrong place.
It seems to me that the internet is killing sea level rise. Fake sea level rise that is.
Wait, I thought the repeal of the “Net Neutrality” rules already destroyed the Internet.
From FAQs of the Digital Coast Sea Level Rise Viewer, which I take it is where the data are from:
“These scenarios begin in the year 2000 (versus 1992 in the previous version) and take into
account global mean sea level rise, regional changes in ocean circulation, changes in Earth’s
gravity field due to ice melt redistribution, and local vertical land motion.
A relative sea level rise change adjustment to the current National Tidal Datum Epoch (1983-
2001) will cause a minimal offset that may be needed for some applications. The U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers sea level rise calculator can correct for this offset.
Based on the accuracy of the elevation and tidal surface data used as mapping inputs, users
should round to the nearest one-foot mapping increment to view potential impacts.”
https://coast.noaa.gov/data/digitalcoast/pdf/slr-faq.pdf
This is a sloppy paper, and I wonder if it would pass peer review. The rounding error alone makes it suspect – even NOAA says it shouldn’t be used for planning purposes (“The data, maps, and information provided should be used only as a screening-level tool.”). That said, it’s important to realize that the data incorporate vertical land motion , so the global average SLR of 3.2 mm does not apply. The fact that king tides are already regularly inundating parts of the east coast even without severe storms makes the idea slightly more plausible, but overall it still seems scientifically weak.
King tides have been “inundating” those same areas for well over 100 years.
…Just as we were neck deep in Horse-bucky at the turn into 1900, and how all the banking system failed, and planes dropped out of the sky when it turned midnight on the last day of 1999.
This claim is constructed using a propaganda rule I call “The Frightened Animals of Bambi’s Forest Flee In Terror”. The rule is so aptly named no explanation is necessary. I’m clever that way.
The appropriate rsponse is to demand that this waste paper be withdrawn.